A new understanding of the solar dynamo published

The sun’s magnetic field can play havoc with communications technology. Stanford scientists have now described one of the underlying processes that help form the magnetic field, which could help scientists predict its behavior.

By Bjorn Carey

NASA SDO/HMI

The sun’s double-cell meridional circulation structure is shown as streamlines in this diagram based on research at Stanford’s Hansen Experimental Physics Laboratory.

Stanford solar scientists have solved one of the few remaining fundamental mysteries of how the sun works.

The mechanism, known as meridional flow, works something like a conveyor belt. Magnetic plasma migrates north to south on the sun’s surface, from the equator to the poles, and then cycles into the sun’s interior on its way back to the equator.

The rate and depth beneath the surface of the sun at which this process occurs is critical for predicting the sun’s magnetic and flare activity, but has remained largely unknown until now.

The solar scientists used the Stanford-operated Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI) – an instrument onboard NASA’s Solar Dynamic Observatory satellite – to track solar waves in much the way seismologists would study seismic movements beneath the surface of the Earth. Every 45 seconds for the past two years, the HMI’s Doppler radar snapped images of plasma waves moving across the sun’s surface.

By identifying patterns of sets of waves, the scientists could recognize how the solar materials move from the sun’s equator toward the poles, and how they return to the equator through the sun’s interior.

“Once we understood how long it takes the wave to pass across the exterior, we determined how fast it moves inside, and thus how deep it goes,” said Junwei Zhao, a senior research scientist at the Hansen Experimental Physics Laboratory at Stanford, and lead author on the paper.

Although solar physicists have long hypothesized such a mechanism, at least in general terms, the new observations redefine solar currents in a few ways. First, the returning currents occur 100,000 kilometers below the surface of the sun, roughly half as deep as suspected. As such, solar materials pass through the interior and return to the equator more quickly than hypothesized.

More startling, Zhao said, is that the equator-ward flow is actually sandwiched between two “layers” of pole-ward currents, a more complicated mechanism than previously thought, and one that could help refine predictions of the sun’s activity.

“Considered together, this means that our previously held beliefs about the solar cycle are not totally accurate, and that we may need to make accommodations,” Zhao said.

For example, some computer models projected that the current solar cycle would be strong, but observations have since showed it is actually much weaker than the previous cycle. This inconsistency could be due to the previously unknown inaccuracies of the meridional circulation mechanism used in the simulations.

Improving the accuracy of simulations, Zhao said, will produce a better picture of fluctuations of the sun’s magnetic field, which can interfere with satellites and communications technology on Earth. The sun’s magnetic field resets every 11 years – the next reset will occur sometime in the next few months – and there is evidence that changes in the meridional flow can influence how the magnetic field evolves during a particular cycle.

“We want to continue monitoring variations of the meridional flow,” he said, “so that we can better predict the next solar cycle, when it will come and how active it will be.”

The report was published in the online edition of The Astrophysical Journal Letters. It was co-authored by three other researchers at the Hansen Experimental Physics Laboratory – senior scientists Rick Bogart and Alexander Kosovichev and research associate Thomas Hartlep – as well as NASA senior scientist Tom Duvall. Phil Scherrer, a professor of physics at Stanford, is the principal investigator of the HMI project and supervised the study.

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Leif adds an excerpt from the paper in an email:

Meridional ﬂow inside the Sun plays an important role in redistributing rotational angular momentum and transporting magnetic ﬂux, and is crucial to our understanding of the strength and duration of sunspot cycles according to ﬂux-transport dynamo theories. At the Sun’s surface and in its shallow interior to at least 30 Mm in depth, the meridional ﬂow is predominantly poleward with a peak speed of approximately 20 m/s.

The poleward plasma ﬂow transports the surface magnetic ﬂux from low latitudes to the polar region, causing the periodic reversals of the global magnetic ﬁeld, a process important to the prediction of the solar cycles. The speed and variability of the meridional ﬂow also play an important role in determining the strength and duration of the solar cycles, and the unusually long activity minimum at the end of Solar Cycle 23 during 2007–2010 was thought to be associated with an increase of the meridional ﬂow speed during the declining phase of the previous cycle. Therefore, an accurate determination of the meridional ﬂow proﬁle is crucial to our understanding and prediction of solar magnetic activities.

Although the poleward meridional ﬂow at the solar surface and in shallow depths has been well studied, the depth and speed proﬁle of the equatorward return ﬂow, which is expected to exist inside the solar convection zone to meet the mass conservation, largely remains a puzzle. It is generally assumed that the return ﬂow is located near the base of the convection zone, although no convincing evidence had been reported.

The continuous Doppler observations by the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager onboard the recently launched Solar Dynamics Observatory mission (SDO) allow us to measure and detect the long-sought equatorward ﬂow. Our analysis, which takes into account the systematic center-to-limb effect that was recently found in the local helioseismology analysis techniques, gives a two-dimensional cross-section picture of the meridional ﬂow inside the nearly entire solar convection zone, and reveals a double-cell circulation with the equatorward ﬂow located near the middle of the convection zone.

Figure 1 shows the new picture suggested by the HMI data.

This new picture of the solar interior meridional circulation differs substantially from the previously widely believed picture of a single-cell circulation with the equatorward ﬂow near the bottom of the convection zone [the Conveyor Belt Model]. Through removing a systematic center-to-limb effect that was only recently identiﬁed, our analysis corrects and improves the previous solar interior meridional ﬂow proﬁle given by Giles (1999) using a similar analysis procedure.

The new meridional circulation proﬁle poses a challenge to the ﬂux-transport dynamo models, but provides more physical constraints to these models creating a new opportunity to further understand how magnetic ﬁeld is generated and how magnetic ﬂux is transported inside the Sun. Past dynamo simulations have already demonstrated that a meridional circulation proﬁle with multiple cells might not be able to reproduce the butterﬂy diagram and the phase relationship between the toroidal and poloidal ﬁelds as observed, unless the dynamo model was reconsidered. However, on the other hand, solar convection simulations have shown the possibility of multi-cell circulation with a shallow equatorward ﬂow (e.g.,Miesch et al. 2006; Guerrero et al. 2013), demonstrating that our analysis results are reasonable.

Moreover, a recent dynamo simulation, with the double-cell meridional circulation proﬁle incorporated, showed that the solar magnetic properties could be robustly reproduced after taking into consideration of turbulent pumping, turbulent diffusivity, and other factors (Pipin & Kosovichev 2013). All these studies, together with our observational results, suggest a rethinking of how the solar magnetic ﬂux is generated and transported inside the Sun.

368 thoughts on “A new understanding of the solar dynamo published”

Now take into account the downward motion of the hydrogen [plasma flows] and the burning of the hydrogen into helium on the surface of the core. Again, the core is the place where burned hydrogen waste products are stored. As per other research, the hydrogen density above the core is 75% to 25% helium. In the core the helium is at 75% and the hydrogen at 25%.

Dr. Lurtz says:
August 29, 2013 at 10:05 amNow take into account the downward motion of the hydrogen [plasma flows] and the burning of the hydrogen into helium on the surface of the core.
No, the burning does not take place on the surface of the core. And you have to be explicit about what you call the core. Energy production maximizes at the center where the temperature is highest.These things will explain the 180/360 year cycles.
it takes 250,000 years for the energy released in the core to reach the surface, so we cannot say that the core processes explains 180/360 ‘cycles’.

However, on the other hand, solar convection simulations have shown the possibility of multi-cell circulation with a shallow equatorward ﬂow (e.g.,Miesch et al. 2006; Guerrero et al. 2013), demonstrating that our analysis results are reasonable.

They’re validating their results, which are supposedly based on observational results, with simulations?! Like “our interpretation of the readings must be correct because someone already modeled something similar”? Shouldn’t it be the other way around?

Again, we can map the interior of the Sun using sound waves. Are they not energy? Do they not move energy faster than 250,000 years? Yes, you can not say what processes explain the cycles, because the model is incomplete!

In addition, you “prove” what happens in the cores interior. A supernova explosion happens in days. That energy moves faster than 250,000 years.

It is time for your theories/proposals; instead of blasting everyone else. What is your theory of the 180/360 year cycles?

Pinroot asked about the source of the name.
No, not the egregious modern-day Hansen, it was named after William Webster Hansen (May 27, 1909 – May 23, 1949), a U.S. physicist who was one of the founders of the technology of microwave electronics. See e.g. wikipedia entry.

It’s funny to me to see people who do such a good job criticizing the use of models – computer games – in place of science in the global warming debate embrace the same use of models – comparable computer games – in place of science in solar physics.

You are correct. We should not use models. We will get together some
funds and buy a space ship and send the two of you (Mark and Katherine)
to the sun to take measurements directly. Really, you should think before
you type.

In reality, any equation can be considered a “model” so no one who
knows their ass from a hole in the ground (should I have self-snipped that?)
would think that you can’t use models in science. But eventually they have
to match the real world. That is the point. The problem folks have with
models are the projections 100 years from now of temperatures, weather,
mass extinctions, etc. Short term predictions can be tested and that is
the point of models/science. The GCM’s are not doing that well. It is the
long term catastrophic nth-dimensional projections that are the problem.
By nth-dimensional I mean the chaining together of what-if scenarios.

Dr. Lurtz says:
August 29, 2013 at 10:18 amAgain, we can map the interior of the Sun using sound waves. Are they not energy?
The energy of the sound from distant thunder is infinitesimal compared to the energy in the thunderstorm itself.

Katherine says:
August 29, 2013 at 10:18 amThey’re validating their results, which are supposedly based on observational results, with simulations?!
A model simulation is the expression of the physics we know about a phenomenon, so the statement is that the data is consistent with the physics as far as we know it. This is important because both the data and the physics have uncertainties.

Dr. Lurtz says:
August 29, 2013 at 10:18 amWhat is your theory of the 180/360 year cycles?
There aren’t any.

Zeke says:
August 29, 2013 at 10:29 amCurrents generate magnetic fields.
In a plasma, movement of the matter in an existing magnetic field generates the electrical currents.

Bart says:
August 29, 2013 at 10:35 amIn the end, it will be determined that there are two fundamental processes with periods of approximately P1 = 20 and P2 = 23.6 years which beat together
Bart, we are trying to discuss science here. So, perhaps, you should not expose your ignorance yet again.

Dr. Lurtz says:
August 29, 2013 at 10:41 am
Leif Svalgaard says: ?????????
Again, answer all of my questions. Don’t just cherry pick! Don’t you have theories? Oh, that is correct; you are one of those statisticians, not a real solar scientist.
#######################

Mods please

Leif and others should not be subjected to this kind of abusive trolling on a technical scientific thread. Especially from an anonymous poster.

Dr. Lurtz says:
August 29, 2013 at 10:47 amI do real math models. I use statistics data to verify whether my model is correct.
‘real’ math models?
In physics, models are an expression of our knowledge [a short-hand you might say] and so what is important is what physical mechanism lies behind an observation. As far as I know you have never explained the physics.

Steven Mosher says:
August 29, 2013 at 10:54 amLeif and others should not be subjected to this kind of abusive trolling on a technical scientific thread. Especially from an anonymous poster.
Well, in general we should take care that a thread is not [as in this case] hi-jacked by people who has their own [unfounded] pet ‘theories’ to peddle. I’m myself partly guilty by even replying to them [as their nonsense should just be ignored], but on the other hand there may be readers that need a suitable warning about the spreading of this kind of stuff.

Fascinating story about our closest star. The term “Doppler radar” is used incorrectly, I suspect. It appears that the scientists are creating images similar to Doppler radar, but other techniques are used to generate the images.

So ballpark, the surface flow is 20m/sec, so the time to transport a parcel from equator to a pole is roughly years, give or take a hair? Or rather less time (perhaps a year or even less), since the surface flow must either accelerate or the thickness of the northbound surface layer must increase due to conservation of mass plus the Jacobean, or does it remain uniform (meaning that there is continuous subduction occurring as it moves north, which has a major impact on where the defect line would be where there is no bulk transport in the center of the outer roll?

The movie above (with only a cross-section shown) doesn’t show the compression of flow streamlines that has to occur as one moves towards the poles. Surely this creates some sort of instability. I would not claim this is the cause of the butterflies, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there were some visible sign of a turbulent instability as the plasma is effectively compressed as it flows north.

RHL says:
August 29, 2013 at 11:09 amThe term “Doppler radar” is used incorrectly, I suspect.
Every analogy is halting at some point. What we observe is that the solar surface ‘bobs up and down’ [because of waves in the material]. So patches of the solar surface is coming toward us [and is blue-shifted] and other patches are moving away from us [and is red-shifted]. The Doppler map shows where the blue-shifted and red-shifted patches are. Analysis of the pattern allows us to say something about the solar interior [just like seismic waves from earthquakes – or artificial explosions – do], so the ‘Doppler’ designated is very appropriate.

Jim G says:
August 29, 2013 at 11:19 amI was merely asking you to clarify your comment, the condescension was unnecessary.
Perhaps you could appreciate that my comment about ‘theory’ has applicability to other people’s use of the term [.e.g a certain Dr. L].

I always thought it was extremely interesting that it takes 250,000 years for energy generated in the core to reach the surface of the Sun. Obviously there is a lot of molecules under tremendous pressure to migrate through but a similar process must also work on Earth. How long does it take for energy received from the Sun to migrate its way through all those land, water and atmospheric molecules back out to space.

The movie above (with only a cross-section shown) doesn’t show the compression of flow streamlines that has to occur as one moves towards the poles. Surely this creates some sort of instability. I would not claim this is the cause of the butterflies, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there were some visible sign of a turbulent instability as the plasma is effectively compressed as it flows north.

Hmmm, a second source of instability occurred to me. Northbound currents “should” be deflected spinward by Coriolis forces, should they not? Southbound currents “should” be deflected antispinwards. There are no continental boundaries so shouldn’t the entire flow pattern be surface-skewed, accelerating, to the right, spiral around at the poles before “going down the drain” there, and come back, depth skewed towards the left, so that the northbound and southbound expresses cross at some angle across the defect plane. There’s a source of serious turbulence right there, especially when one has to factor in magnetohydrodynamics and this motion occurs in a magnetic field.

Bill Illis says:
August 29, 2013 at 11:26 amI always thought it was extremely interesting that it takes 250,000 years for energy generated in the core to reach the surface of the Sun. Obviously there is a lot of molecules under tremendous pressure to migrate through but a similar process must also work on Earth.
Strictly speaking it is not the molecules that migrate [as the interior out to 0.7 of the radius is convectively stable – i.e. does not move in the radial direction – like the Earth’s stratosphere]. The energy is carried by photons, that are constantly absorbed and new ones emitted [some of them back in the direction of the center]. This ‘diffusion’ of photons [energy] is very slow, hence the long time to reach the outer layers.

How long does it take for energy received from the Sun to migrate its way through all those land, water and atmospheric molecules back out to space.
For some it is immediately, for others [e,g, if it reaches the deep ocean of great depth on land] it can take thousands of years.

“This new picture of the solar interior meridional circulation differs substantially from the previously widely believed picture of a single-cell circulation with the equatorward ﬂow near the bottom of the convection zone [the Conveyor Belt Model].”

Indeed, very interesting… One wishes many including the good doctor were as willing to correct their antiquated vision of Earth atmospheric circulation…

Dr Svalgaard, I have am looking for papers regarding plasma recombination. I am wondering what the sun and other stars would look like if their power came solely from recombination. I’m not saying that’s how stars work, just wondering what a model of a star would look like using recombination rather than fusion as its power source.

Any links you could provide to profession-grade work on plasma recombination would be appreciated. My undergrad textbook has nothing on the subject.

Galvanize says:
August 29, 2013 at 11:36 amAre they in a position to hind cast and see, by how much, plugging in this new data improves the projections for the current solar cycle?
I don’t think it improves the projections for the current cycle, but our improved understanding might help for the next cycle.

Salvatore Del Prete says:
August 29, 2013 at 11:42 amMany think it is the angular mometum exerted by the planets. Count me in on this theory, and out on this latest study.
Never let observations interfere with your beliefs, it seems…
“Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.” (Winston Churchill)

The use of models compares to the use of reasoning. Neither models nor reasoning are intrinsically good or bad. Their quality and relevance comes from their constructive properties and congruity with real phenomena.

In terms of my data, one would expect the data for SSN from 1995-2016 to be similar to that of the period 1927-1950 (data for SSN before 1927 is murky/incorrect/inaccurate/used different formula/etc)
Average annual SSN 1927-1950
63

There were may solar scientist who thought Solar Cycle 24 was going to be very active,
Now that its half over and significantly lower than what was projected 10 years ago I find it difficult to understand how you Dr, Svalgaard can still defend that position, You personally may not have predicted an active cycle 24 but many other solar scientists did.

Magicjava says:
August 29, 2013 at 11:41 amAny links you could provide to profession-grade work on plasma recombination would be appreciated. My undergrad textbook has nothing on the subject.
I have no idea what you mean by ‘plasma recombination’ in this context. The Sun is so hot that plasma is generated spontaneous and continuously as the kinetic energy of the moving atoms are much larger than the binding energy of the electrons around the nucleus. Furthermore, the fusion process produces neutrinos. we can calculate how many and of which energy and the observations show good correspondence with the calculations, so we are quite certain that fusion is what powers the Sun.

Top cell’s 15m/s velocity as quoted gives 1.2 solar circumference for 11 year cycle, which appear to be far [too] fast.
Velocity of about 6m/s (~0.5 of solar circumference) would be of right order for generating 11 year sunspot cycle ( for 22 year magnetic cycle about 3m/s).
That said, if the above meridional flow hypothesis explains solar magnetic cycle, it still doesn’t tell anything about sunspot generation and even less about such important matter as the Grand minima. I expect further progress, but until then I’ll stick with ‘magnetospheric feedback’ hypothesis for the solar magnetic cycle:http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC2.htm
which gives both magnetic cycle and the forthcoming Grand minimum. I am sure none of the experts in field will agree, but again the sun wouldn’t care too much about that.

“For example, some computer models projected that the current solar cycle would be strong,”

Not again, please. That was a prediction, surely. A failed one, but prediction nevertheless. The term “projection” was used only in climate science so far, with no definite meaning, to muddy the water, no doubt.

Thanks for the reply. As I said, I’m not saying the sun is powered by recombination. I just want to build a model of a star powered by recombination to see what the results would be. Recombination is not covered in the plasma textbook I have and I’ve had little success in tracking down online papers covering recombination.

Again, thanks for your reply and thanks for sharing the article about new information about the sun with us.

Arthur says:
August 29, 2013 at 12:11 pmNow that its half over and significantly lower than what was projected 10 years ago I find it difficult to understand how you Dr, Svalgaard can still defend that position
I think the prediction of 10 years ago is holding up quite well: 75+/-8, or 68% chance that the value would be in the range 67-83, or 95% chance that it would be in the range of 59-91: http://www.leif.org/research/Cycle%2024%20Smallest%20100%20years.pdf

You personally may not have predicted an active cycle 24 but many other solar scientists did.
So what? they all agree now that mine is what counts :-)

Salvatore Del Prete says:
August 29, 2013 at 12:13 pmsome of the solar predictions were good but as the article points out many predicted based on some computer models that this current solar cycle would be strong..
See above.

Leif Svalgaard says;
‘on the other hand there may be readers that need a suitable warning about the spreading of this kind of stuff.’
You are perfectly correct. I, at least, who visit here regularly need rubbish exposing as, rubbish as my science education is often inadequate to pick out the untruths. Thank you.

vukcevic says:
August 29, 2013 at 12:21 pmI’ll stick with ‘magnetospheric feedback’ hypothesis for the solar magnetic cycle:http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC2.htm which gives both magnetic cycle and the forthcoming Grand minimum.
You are one of those who pollute these pages by spreading garbage.

I am sure none of the experts in field will agree, but again the sun wouldn’t care too much about that
nor about your nonsense.

“@Bart
Don’t let these so called professionals here intimidate you! Just keep following your own results.”

Thanks but, don’t worry. Eventually, he will either learn how it works and realize that it’s been staring him in the face all along, or someone else will. Anyone with a moiety of skill in the appropriate subjects will recognize what this means.

Let us see what the temperatures do going forward and how the sun behaves going forward and if any correlations come about as a result, and then take it from there.

I want to see results not talk which is all we are getting.

Make the predictions and stand by them, a study or talk without being backed up by predictions, is meaningless.
Put the money where the study is and make the prediction and stand by the prediction.
I hate excuses and changes once a prediction is made. Don’t make it if you can’t stand by it.

This (magnetic properties of the sun)is all a simulation… It only explains how it “might” work.
And how does the surface of the sun work again??
I find it amazing that there is a layer of neutral iron and a layer of neutral nickle that HMI can use to determine the surface magnetic field… And they can do this at the micro nm scale of measurement. The surface of the neutral layer give enough resolution for 100’s of feet of motion…..
Above this layer the temp rises quickly to thousands of degrees… That would indicate the presence of a electric field accelerating the plasma from 0 to to a couple of million degrees by the time it reaches the corona…

“””””……Stanford solar scientists solve one of the sun’s mysteries……””””””

“Solve” ??? I couldn’t find that in my compendium of weasel words.

Damn nice to see an announcement, where the informants, have confidence in the correctness of their new(er) model.

I’ve been there and done that (in a much more minor situation) and it is always a thrill, to be able to say with confidence; “We figured this thing out correctly.”

It’s not too often that Dr Svalgaard asserts that the sun is actually doing something; so this must be the real thing. Izzat a sort of solar “Hadlee Cell” thing Leif. (except in a layered direction) ? Seems like there must be some sort of angular momentum value, that suddenly got itself adjusted to a new value. Darned if I can guess whether up or down though.

Leif Svalgaard says: I think the . (Dr. Svalgaard’s) prediction of 10 years ago is holding up quite well: 75+/-8….
…….
You are . (Vukcevic) one of those who pollute these pages by spreading garbage.

Hey Doc
Are you worried that my ‘garbage’ produces superior results to the Stanford science?
Let’s see, your hypothesis is based on the PF max time which was not reached until 2006 Your paper http://www.leif.org/research/Polar%20Fields%20and%20Cycle%2024.pdf
is also dated 2006, so you could not make prediction in 2003, the PF was 3 years off its maximum
I wrote the equation in the early part of 2003 (published 8th January 2004)http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC2.htm (indicated by red arrow) when it was not known future course of the PF, while Hathaway and Dicpati were talking large numbers.
Equation has proved itself up to date, may fail in the future but that remains to be seen. You may call it garbage but so far so good.

There were may solar scientist who thought Solar Cycle 24 was going to be very active,
Now that its half over and significantly lower than what was projected 10 years ago I find it difficult to understand how you Dr, Svalgaard can still defend that position, You personally may not have predicted an active cycle 24 but many other solar scientists did……..”””””

Isn’t that the process that one is supposed to follow in science ?

If you make predictions on the basis of your (current) model, and then new lines of evidence suggest that a different model is more accurate; this is like having your foot on the gas, and suddenly realizing there’s a concrete wall in your way. Common sense dictates that you at least take your foot off the gas, and preferably steer in a different direction that is more likely to succeed.

I don’t see any contradiction to complain about. If you realize that the flow has a different structure from your previous models said; well you shift horses to what your evidence tells you is a more real model or structure.
Quite often, the most valuable research discovery, is the discovery that you have no business continuing down the previously preferred path, and should shift to a new one.

Bart says:
August 29, 2013 at 1:01 pmD&K had you pegged.
Apart of the D&K syndrome is that you don’t even know it.

u.k.(us) says:
August 29, 2013 at 1:02 pmIf I were “standing” on the “surface” of the sun, how much would I weigh ?
27 times as much as you would weigh on the surface of the Earth.

Brant Ra says:
August 29, 2013 at 1:08 pmI find it amazing that there is a layer of neutral iron and a layer of neutral nickle that HMI can use to determine the surface magnetic field
Actually no ‘layers’ just iron and nickel atoms springled among the overwhelming bulk of Hyrogen and Helium.

That would indicate the presence of a electric field accelerating the plasma from 0 to to a couple of million degrees by the time it reaches the corona…
If there was such an electric field it would be neutralized by the plasma, so no electric field.

george e. smith says:
August 29, 2013 at 1:10 pmDamn nice to see an announcement, where the informants, have confidence in the correctness of their new(er) model.
We are actually talking about obervations and measurements. It is an extra bouns that they also agree with some models.

Izzat a sort of solar “Hadley Cell” thing Leif. (except in a layered direction)?
More or less, and probably also caused by some temperature difference, but the ‘layered’ puzzles me. The Hadley cell is also ‘layered’.

vukcevic says:
August 29, 2013 at 1:21 pmEquation has proved itself up to date, may fail in the future but that remains to be seen. You may call it garbage but so far so good.
Apart from your ‘history’ being wrong, we have gone over this too many times to be worth repeating. Garbage it was and still is.

Strictly speaking it is not the molecules that migrate [as the interior out to 0.7 of the radius is convectively stable – i.e. does not move in the radial direction – like the Earth’s stratosphere]. The energy is carried by photons, that are constantly absorbed and new ones emitted [some of them back in the direction of the center].

Bart says:
August 29, 2013 at 1:55 pm“A part of the D&K syndrome is that you don’t even know it.”
Precisely.
Including your denial of your incompetence. In any event you are not bringing anything to the table in this thread. Perhaps you should refrain from embarrassing yourself any further.

Meridional ﬂow inside the Sun plays an important role in redistributing rotational angular momentum and transporting magnetic ﬂux,

Redistributing angular momentum? Would you be describing something similar to a Hadley Cell which is normally associated with atmospheric flow on a planet’s surface? So you are saying all of this occurs within the 200,000 km deep convection zone layer of the sun and does not penetrate other deeper layers? Would this shallowness also not suggest there are two layers within the convection zone itself?

David says:
August 29, 2013 at 1:57 pmI really want to read Leif’s comments, but am really annoyed by the condescension. Am I the only one?
No, there is the usual band of peddlers of nonsense [vuk, bart, Henry, Salvatore, …] who deserves unmasking when they try to hi-jack a thread. Are you joining that club? I hope not. We could have a good science discussion about why the Stanford observations are important, how they might shape the future development of solar dynamo theory, what it might mean for future solar activity, how the measurements are made, what the uncertainties are, etc, etc, but we are constantly derailed by the whining, self-deception, self-aggrandizement, etc of a few spoilers.

May be, may be, but in this ‘muck’ of mine there’s shiny bit of brass ,
Beats your prediction by 3 years, and foretold not only low SC24 and even lover SC25, but also what no one else did in 2003, a Grand Minimum in the late 2020s.
Neither you or Stanford can match it, stand it or accept that a true amateur could do it
Bye.

dscott says:
August 29, 2013 at 2:11 pmSo you are saying all of this occurs within the 200,000 km deep convection zone layer of the sun and does not penetrate other deeper layers?
Essentially, yes. The deeper layers are stable, they don’t convect, or circulate [as far as we know].

Would this shallowness also not suggest there are two layers within the convection zone itself?
the data does suggest the presence of two layers as shown in Figure 1.

August 29, 2013 at 1:39 pm
=============
“If I were “standing” on the “surface” of the sun, how much would I weigh ?”
27 times as much as you would weigh on the surface of the Earth.
———————
Thanks Leif,
Now what if I was an Earth radius from the sun’s center of mass ?
How many times would it be ?
Just trying to get a feel for it :)

vukcevic says:
August 29, 2013 at 2:12 pmBeats your prediction by 3 years
More nonsense [mine is from 2004]and foretold not only low SC24 and even lower SC25, but also what no one else did in 2003, a Grand Minimum in the late 2020s.
Schatten and Tobiska 2003 http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2003SPD….34.0603S “The surprising result of these long-range predictions is a rapid decline in solar activity, starting with cycle #24. If this trend continues, we may see the Sun heading towards a “Maunder” type of solar activity minimum – an extensive period of reduced levels of solar activity”

But all of that doesn’t matter. Nobody has priority on nonsense which can be produced at any and all times.

“That would indicate the presence of a electric field accelerating the plasma from 0 to to a couple of million degrees by the time it reaches the corona…”
“Leif- If there was such an electric field it would be neutralized by the plasma, so no electric field.”

The only other option you have Leif, is a magnetic field… Which doesnt do nearly the job of an electric field of accelerating ions and electrons.
How does a plasma tube work? Wheres the electric field in a plasma tube? The most energy efficient way of making a plasma is direct acceleration by electric field. You can get to GeV in inches. See wakefield accelerators.

Neutral?! atoms sprinkled among the plasma?? Hahaha…. Have you even looked at the MDI and HMI movies?? They use the “Bilderberg” model of solar atmosphere to determine WHY that neutral iron is there… Its just a model. Its doesnt really tell you why and what the iron is there.

“Iron, with its partly filled 3d subshell, has, by far, the largest number of lines all over the spectrum of a typical late-type star. This atomic property coupled to a relatively large abundance makes it a reference element for spectroscopic estimates of stellar parameters.”

“Specifically, the Fe I line is able to determine field strength, longitudinal and transverse flux four times more accurately than the Ni I line in active regions. Inclination and azimuthal angles can be recovered to ≈2° above 600 Mx cm−2 for Fe I and above 1000 Mx cm−2 for Ni I. Therefore, the Fe I line better determines the magnetic-field orientation in plage, whereas both lines provide good orientation determination in penumbrae and umbrae.
We selected the Fe I spectral line for use in HMI due to its better performance for magnetic diagnostics while not sacrificing velocity information.”http://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/0608124.pdf

u.k.(us) says:
August 29, 2013 at 2:17 pmNow what if I was an Earth radius from the sun’s center of mass ?
The sun’s center of mass is the center of the sun.How many times would it be ?
since the density at the center is about 29 times that of the Earth’s you would weigh 29 times as much as on the Earth.

Many think it is the angular mometum exerted by the planets. Count me in on this theory, and out on this latest study.

…
Never let observations interfere with your beliefs, …
…

Dr. Svalgaard,

This is king of tongue-in-cheek but, for those who believe that the angular momentum of the planets is IMPORTANT – and if the energy from the interior of the sun takes 250,000 years to reach the surface – would not those angular momentum believers have to base their theories [assertions?] on the positons of the planets as they were 250,000 years ago rather than current planetary positions?

I really want to read Leif’s comments, but am really annoyed by the condescension. Am I the only one?

I read WUWT threads on solar matters because I know almost nothing about them and I want to learn.

This thread is about a new paper about the solar dynamo.
I want to know about it.

Others have other ideas about the Sun, and it is reasonable for them each to state their alternative and to link to it. Hence, people (including me) who want to learn can follow-up their alternative ideas. Except for that, their only reasonable contribution to discussion of the new paper is for them to state any flaws they perceive it to have.

But that is not what has happened in this thread. Advocates of particular ideas have been promoting their ideas to the exclusion of the subject of the thread. They may not know it, but they have been trolling.

Leif took the trouble to write the above article which describes the paper about the solar dynamo such that the paper can be understood by non-experts. He has a right to be offended by the trolling which is preventing discussion of his article and the paper which his article explains.

Under the circumstances, I think Leif’s responses to the trolling have been restrained.

Brant Ra says:
August 29, 2013 at 2:26 pmWheres the electric field in a plasma tube?
It comes from an external power source. Turn of the power and see what you get.

Neutral?! atoms sprinkled among the plasma??
Its doesnt really tell you why and what the iron is there.
Spectroscopy has been a mature science for many decades. We know rather precisely how much iron there is in the sun: namely 1 iron atom per 25,000 hydrogen atoms. The iron atoms are neutral because the temperature is not high enough to ionize them. Even for Hydrogen, only one out of 10,000 atoms are ionized. The conductivity of the photosphere is like that of sea-water. Not particularly high. It is still a plasma because the length scale is so large.

F. Ross says:
August 29, 2013 at 2:28 pmThis is kind of tongue-in-cheek but, for those who believe that the angular momentum of the planets is IMPORTANT – and if the energy from the interior of the sun takes 250,000 years to reach the surface – would not those angular momentum believers have to base their theories [assertions?] on the positons of the planets as they were 250,000 years ago rather than current planetary positions?
You have to ask them, but it doesn’t really matter because there is no exchange of angular momentum between the planets and the sun

SMC says:
August 29, 2013 at 2:44 pmWow. Some ugly comments here.
The ugly comments are almost always from the same handful of nasty or misled [by their own, self-perceived brilliance] people [in every solar thread]. We are used to them, they show up without fail, and make the threads somewhat entertaining, if a bit tedious.

Leif Svalgaard says: August 29, 2013 at 2:23 pm
…………
Here is full Abstract from Ken Schatten’s paper (since your link failed)Abstract
Long-range (few years to decades) solar activity prediction techniques vary greatly in their methods. They range from examining planetary orbits, to spectral analyses (e.g. Fourier, wavelet and spectral analyses), to artificial intelligence methods, to simply using general statistical techniques. Rather than concentrate on statistical/mathematical/numerical methods, we discuss a class of methods which appears to have a “physical basis.” Not only does it have a physical basis, but this basis is rooted in both “basic” physics (dynamo theory), but also solar physics (Babcock dynamo theory). The class we discuss is referred to as “precursor methods,” originally developed by Ohl, Brown and Williams and others, using geomagnetic observations.
My colleagues and I have developed some understanding for how these methods work and have expanded the prediction methods using “solar dynamo precursor” methods, notably a “SODA” index (SOlar Dynamo Amplitude). These methods are now based upon an understanding of the Sun’s dynamo processes- to explain a connection between how the Sun’s fields are generated and how the Sun broadcasts its future activity levels to Earth. This has led to better monitoring of the Sun’s dynamo fields and is leading to more accurate prediction techniques. Related to the Sun’s polar and toroidal magnetic fields, we explain how these methods work, past predictions, the current cycle, and predictions of future of solar activity levels for the next few solar cycles.
The surprising result of these long-range predictions is a rapid decline in solar activity, starting with cycle #24. If this trend continues, we may see the Sun heading towards a “Maunder” type of solar activity minimum – an extensive period of reduced levels of solar activity. For the solar physicists, who enjoy studying solar activity, we hope this isn’t so, but for NASA, which must place and maintain satellites in low earth orbit (LEO), it may help with reboost problems. Space debris, and other aspects of objects in LEO will also be affected.

There is qualification “If this trend continues,…..” which may or may not, hedging the bet …
In my case there is no “If” it accurately plots the solar activity evolution path (so far).

vukcevic says:
August 29, 2013 at 3:02 pmHere is full Abstract from Ken Schatten’s paper (since your link failed)
Yoy can lay off the snide comment. Everybody knows that WordPress mangles links. All you have to do is to copy the link and paste it in another window.

There is qualification “If this trend continues,…..” which may or may not, hedging the bet …
In Science there are always qualifications.

In my case there is no “If”
In pseudo-science there are no ‘ifs’ or ‘nuts’, so you fit right in.it accurately plots the solar activity evolution path
No, it is only curve fitting and it fails going back in time, but all that we have gone over too many times to arouse any further interest.

Carsten Arnholm says:
August 29, 2013 at 3:07 pmThere is as you know exchange of orbital angular momentum between the bodies of the solar system, but it balances out precisely.
Orbital angular momentum is not the issue, which is whether there is exchange of orbital and solar rotation angular momentum, which there is not.

u.k.(us) says:
August 29, 2013 at 2:17 pmNow what if I was an Earth radius from the sun’s center of mass ?
The sun’s center of mass is the center of the sun.How many times would it be ?
since the density at the center is about 29 times that of the Earth’s you would weigh 29 times as much as on the Earth.

Wait a minute. As you go beneath the surface, the mass above you provides a countering gravitational force to the mass below. As is said about descending into the Earth, at first your weight will increase as you get closer to the higher-density material below, but only for a proportionally short distance, then your weight will decrease. At the center, you will weigh nothing.

Katherine says:
August 29, 2013 at 10:18 am
…
They’re validating their results, which are supposedly based on observational results, with simulations?! Like “our interpretation of the readings must be correct because someone already modeled something similar”? Shouldn’t it be the other way around?

Science inherently depends upon “models.” The entire effort of science is to develop understandings of natural processes that are “complex enough” to offer understanding of how a given process interacts with other natural systems (to yield predictions of the behaviour of the systems under study). Occam’s Razor asks that such explanations (models) be no more complex than necessary. The problem in climate science is not “computer models,” but rather the scientific explanations upon which the models are built. The science is not “complex enough” to be useful.

If fusion in the core is what powers the Sun and this energy is radiated in all directions with the same strength the double-cell meridional circulation structure would automatically imply that the surface of the sun should be hotter at the poles and maybe at the equator for these are the only places where there is no deviation of the energy coming from the center of the star.

If fusion in the core is what powers the Sun ,coronal temperatures (1,000,000 K) should not be higher than surface temperatures (5778 K)

kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
August 29, 2013 at 3:16 pmWait a minute. …
If you took the Earth and made it have 29 times more massive, you weight would increase 29 times: g = GM/R^2 [make M 29 times larger]
The density near the center of the Sun is 29 times that of the Earth, so the mass of that volume centered on the center with the same radius as the Earth would be 29 times larger than that of the Earth, hence your weight would increase 29 times. I feel a bit silly having to explain this, but there you have it.

So, can we assume that the long solar minimum, and the low intensity of this solar cycle indicate that something may be changing inside the Sun itself, to affect the flows? (I know –probably no one knows). I haven’t read the report yet, but I intend to this evening (if the report is free).

Carsten Arnholm says:
August 29, 2013 at 3:07 pm
There is as you know exchange of orbital angular momentum between the bodies of the solar system, but it balances out precisely.

Orbital angular momentum is not the issue, which is whether there is exchange of orbital and solar rotation angular momentum, which there is not.

True, but your statement there is no exchange of angular momentum between the planets and the sun was what I responded to and it is by itself not correct.

I agree the spin-orbit coupling idea is clearly incorrect, for the reason I gave: Solar system angular momentum is the sum of orbital angular momentum for all the bodies plus angular momentum from the spin of the bodies around their own axes. Since the sum of the orbital angular momenta (?) of the sun+planets balances out precisely, it follows that the spin contributions must also balance out precisely to maintain a constant angular momentum for the solar system. Since almost all the mass is in the Sun, it means the solar spin angular momentum must be constant.

Robertv says:
August 29, 2013 at 3:17 pmthese are the only places where there is no deviation of the energy coming from the center of the star.
The meridional circulation [years] is too slow to make any significant difference [it takes only a couple of weeks for the energy to bubble up though the convection zone], but there probably is a small temperature difference.

If fusion in the core is what powers the Sun ,coronal temperatures (1,000,000 K) should not be higher than surface temperatures (5778 K)
No, as the heating of the corona is due to completely different processes: local explosions and the temperature in an explosions is usually much higher than its surroundings. But you miss the point:
fusion generates neutrinos of different energies and amounts. We can calculate [because we know the atomic physics involved – we measure that in the laboratory] that, and compare to what we actually observe on the Earth, and the amounts agree with the calculations [after allowance for the (also measured) neutrino oscillations http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutrino_oscillation ]

Carsten Arnholm says:
August 29, 2013 at 3:24 pmTrue, but your statement there is no exchange of angular momentum between the planets and the sun was what I responded to and it is by itself not correct.
also true, but you have to take it in the context of the angular momentum ‘theory’ which posits that solar rotation [or circulation within the Sun] is changed by the planets’ influence on the sun’s orbital angular momentum and hence solar activity.

Leif Svalgaard says:
August 29, 2013 at 3:38 pm
also true, but you have to take it in the context of the angular momentum ‘theory’ which posits that solar rotation [or circulation within the Sun] is changed by the planets’ influence on the sun’s orbital angular momentum and hence solar activity.

Carsten Arnholm says:
August 29, 2013 at 3:41 pmYes, that is exactly what I addressed in my previous post.
so now the angular momentum guys should be satisfied that they are wrong. I expect Salvatore to concede any moment now.

“He has a right to be offended by the trolling which is preventing discussion of his article and the paper which his article explains.”

No, that’s really not it. The only reason so much space has been wasted (and, I have tried to keep my OT commentary as brief as possible) is that Leif feels a need to squash any and all comments with which he either disagrees or does not understand. If he just left the comments to stand on their own, that’s all that would have happened – they would just have sat there to be considered or disregarded by others, and Leif could have focused on what he presumably wanted to focus on.

Leif has a very narrow focus. He may be brilliant within that focus, but his bombast when he strays outside of it rather dims any view of it. My problem is, when he is so badly misinformed on topics I do know quite a bit about, how do I determine where his expertise ends and the bombast begins?

Bart says:
August 29, 2013 at 3:54 pmMy problem is, when he is so badly misinformed on topics I do know quite a bit about, how do I determine where his expertise ends and the bombast begins?
The thing you know quite a bit about is like a hammer. If the only tool [your extremely narrow focus] you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. The sun is not an oscillator in the ‘hammer’-world view. The processes that govern the sun are multi-faceted and various and contingent on many random events and cannot be described a simple differential equation.

I take offence to the ‘bombast’ bit. I do my utmost to provide answers that are as scientifically accurate as I can make them. No bombast there. When I see a ‘hammer’ misused on ‘something I do know quite a bit about’ I try to correct the misconception, but you just will not learn [like several of the other merry gang around here], and eventually sinks to the level of insults [which I may occasionally pay back in the same coin to keep up the entertainment level].

….so that the northbound and southbound expresses cross at some angle across the defect plane. There’s a source of serious turbulence right there, especially when one has to factor in magnetohydrodynamics and this motion occurs in a magnetic field.

I presume you mean that this would occur uniformly around particular (internal) circumference.
If not so, then you may have solved another known ‘unknown’, which you may or may not be aware of; i.e. the sun exhibits pronounced magnetic bulge, which slowly (over period of number of cycles) drifts along heliocentric longitude, as shown in this illustration:http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC7.htm

vukcevic says:
August 29, 2013 at 4:18 pmthe sun exhibits pronounced magnetic bulge, which slowly (over period of number of cycles) drifts along heliocentric longitude
that is an artifact of the definition of heliographic longitude, which is based on the rotation period determined by Carrington as a sort of average of his observations. This period has no physical significance. A more correct statement would be that the artificial Carrington longitude drifts with respect to the ‘true’ [average] rotation period of the sun.

I really do not want to continue this conversation. But, I am going to leave one parting message.

“The processes that govern the sun are multi-faceted and various and contingent on many random events and cannot be described a simple differential equation.”

This is trivially untrue from the data alone. In fact, it is very common to solve complicated partial differential equations, whether randomly or deterministically driven, using modal expansion. Generally, some modes tend to be dominant.

“I take offense to the ‘bombast’ bit.”

Chill out. It’s not like I called you incompetent or anything. Try to deal with it in a constructive manner.

Bart says:
August 29, 2013 at 4:32 pmThis is trivially untrue from the data alone. In fact, it is very common to solve complicated partial differential equations, whether randomly or deterministically driven, using modal expansion. Generally, some modes tend to be dominant.
This is where your trivially false hammer view comes in; the sun cannot be described by partial differential equations having a few [or only two as you will have it] dominant modes. In this assumption you show indeed incompetence.

On another note though, while this paper does somewhat give a greater understanding of meridonal flows and flux transportation, I find it difficult to imagine that these currents could be confined to a depth at 100,000 km.
The images taken from the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager only shows us what the Sun is doing within those flows during a period of low heliospheric activity.
I would like to see how these currents operate during a period of higher solar activity.
It is one thing to observe fluid dynamics in a lull, and I’m sure its quite another when there is a storm brewing.
On a side note, before any of you try to claim who was first at solar predictions, I have but one thing to say…..

” I feel a bit silly having to explain this, but there you have it.”
=========================
“we” come here looking for answers, even explanations, but there is no need to explain.
There is always the next comment/link to absorb.

u.k.(us) says:
August 29, 2013 at 4:45 pm“we” come here looking for answers, even explanations, but there is no need to explain.
There is always the next comment/link to absorb.
When answer is given, “you” say ‘wait a minute’…

ClimateForAll says:
August 29, 2013 at 4:44 pmIt is one thing to observe fluid dynamics in a lull, and I’m sure its quite another when there is a storm brewing.
Experience shows that the polar fields ‘in the lull’ is what seems to predict the next solar cycle and that therefore the dynamics during the lull is perhaps the thing to study, but, fear not, we’ll keep a watch on this for the following several years.

If you took the Earth and made it have 29 times more massive, you weight would increase 29 times: g = GM/R^2 [make M 29 times larger]

From Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation, yup.

The density near the center of the Sun is 29 times that of the Earth, so the mass of that volume centered on the center with the same radius as the Earth would be 29 times larger than that of the Earth, hence your weight would increase 29 times. I feel a bit silly having to explain this, but there you have it.

I’m seeing the countering masses. With a perpendicular plane through the radius at 0.009160 solar radii from the center, the mass below minus the mass above would yield 29 Earth masses, if we were using point masses on the radius. But with a number so small, they’re basically hemispheres, so it’s a reasonable simplification.

I see that as soon as I barely move outward from the center, the difference quickly grows and so does my weight. Very soon I’d be at 500 times my Earth weight!

I can see stating a sphere the size of Earth that’s 29 times as dense would yield 29 times the weight, having 29 times the mass. But on the Sun, in the example, there would be so much mass overhead, that would also exert gravitational forces, that I cannot see how it would still sum to 29 times Earth weight.

Leif ! Leif !
I’m not saying I don’t agree. I’m saying that looking at one slice of time doesn’t necessarily mean that a thing could be considered constant.
Just because these meridonal flows are now at about 100,000km, doesn’t mean that it will remain at 100,000km later.
I’m also willing to bet that the amount of plasma that flows along those currents are not constant as well. I imagine that that bottlenecks occur, creating greater volumes of plasma along those flows and lesser volumes elsewhere. Thus creating variability along meridonal lines.
Nandy discribed this, but you know this.
You’re not still holding a grudge are you?
You know I love you man, even if you may have blinders on.
It’s one of the things I respect about you !

kadaka, you are right to question the weight question near the center of the sun. I just checked a few figures first, and here’s my stab.

At the surface you weight let’s say 29x more than on Earth. Ok, I accept that without calc’ing it. But if the sun was all of the same density, from the surface to center, the gravity and your weight would linearly decrease exactly all of the way down. Weightless at the center. But the sun is not of the same density vertically so that linearality would be warped toward the inversed square curve and there we don’t (or I don’t) have the density profile to figure it even if if wanted to, and I don’t right now. So could you end up 29x heavier also at one Earth radius from the center… seems doubtful to me too. Wait, that is unless Leifs 29x density *at that distance from the sun’s center* was correct, then he’s right, all shells above you are meaningless, they all cancel. Inside any spherical shell you are weightless everywhere and we can imagine a hundred shells above of varying density but they can all be discarded when calc’ing the gravity deep inside.

I stopped on Leif statement about that myself, did some work on that very question years ago. That would be an unusual density profile but maybe that is due to the gaseous state. Hmm.

I check the site from time to time and have even posted a few comments here and there. But, this is among the uglier comment threads I’ve seen. Makes me glad I don’t usually follow the comment threads. I do like the reference pages though.

In the classical treatment of all masses as dimensionless points, which greatly simplifies the math, sure, the closer you get to the point the more you weigh. Force of gravity is calculated from the inverse of the square of the distance, so halve the distance and quadruple the force.

But when it’s not a point mass, as when starting on the surface of a sphere and moving to the center, it gets messier. There is mass above and below, the competing gravitational forces cancel out. Your weight goes down. By the time you hit the center of mass, it all cancels out, you cease having weight.

For Earth, the upper crustal stuff is much less dense than the stuff below. So as you drop down past the surface, your weight will slightly increase as you get closer to the higher-density stuff below. But soon your weight will be dropping as you continue traveling to the center.

With the Earth’s different layers of different densities and thicknesses, with density as a function of depth, and layers of changing composition, finding weight (or total force of gravity) on Earth from surface to center is an interesting math exercise, much integration, a computed numerical solution needed.

“Weight,” however, at the center of the sun (or near the center of the sun) is an entertaining theoretical topic , but it is the combination of pressure + temperature + time-at-temperature-and-pressure that MUST be high enough to cause fusion.

And, is a mere 29x gravity enough for that?

Distracting also, is the “total” effect of the planets on the entire sun: While that may be, or may not be, a cause or influence on any thing out at earth’s average orbit, all that is needed to influence circulation out on the edge of the photosphere is not “moving the sun” but moving the filaments and moving, circulating loops of plasma and gasses now “balanced” in near-space vacuums as the chaotically twist and spin. Moving the entire sun is not needed, indeed, the “rest” of the sun could not “move” if the effect is based on the average relative motion changes between loops and currents and the deeper, static (not-moving) core.

It seems it might also give rise to free-floating gobs of magma in the earth’s interior ?

Hell no. Too much pressure compressing what’s there. Depending where you’re looking, the pressure is enough to compress liquids to solids, but there’s enough temperature at the center to liquefy what pressure made solid.

Everything is held together as close to a solid mass as it gets. Anything that’s technically liquid, sure ain’t like water, more like thicker than the thickest asphalt you’ve ever known existed.

So no free-floating magma gobs. I’m sorry, I know it’d make for good sci fi, but still, no.

kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
August 29, 2013 at 5:09 pmI see that as soon as I barely move outward from the center, the difference quickly grows and so does my weight. Very soon I’d be at 500 times my Earth weight!
In fact, if you are 10 Earth radii out you’d be at 200 times your weight on Earth. The thing is that density does not decrease very fast with distance [as long as you deep within the Sun], but the mass increases with the cube of distance, divided by the square of the distance to get the weight, so ten times further out your weight is 290 times Earth weight, which must be decreased a bit [about to 200x] because the density does decrease a bit.

But on the Sun, in the example, there would be so much mass overhead, that would also exert gravitational forces, that I cannot see how it would still sum to 29 times Earth
The mass overhead doesn’t matter. Newton proved that.

Bart says:
August 29, 2013 at 5:25 pmWhat a silly thing to say. It is readily apparent in the data.
This is where your incompetence shows. Live with it. Often, one cannot transfer competence nilly-willy from field to field. You are a victim of that, but don’t know it [in good D&K style]

ClimateForAll says:
August 29, 2013 at 5:26 pmYou’re not still holding a grudge are you?
I never hold grudges. If needed, I get even right away :-)

u.k.(us) says:
August 29, 2013 at 5:39 pmThe deeper one goes into any gravity well, the more it “weighs” ?
No, the weight usually goes up in the beginning, to a maximum, then declines to zero at the very center.

wayne says:
August 29, 2013 at 5:56 pmWait, that is unless Leifs 29x density *at that distance from the sun’s center* was correct, then he’s right, all shells above you are meaningless, they all cancel.
The density is correct. The Sun’s radius is 110 times the Earth’s, so within the first 1/110th of the Sun the density does not vary significantly, so I used the central density.

RACookPE1978 says:
August 29, 2013 at 6:36 pmAnd, is a mere 29x gravity enough for that?
What is important is the pressure and THAT depends on the weight of all the mass overhead.

Brian H says:
August 29, 2013 at 7:17 pmIn both hemispheres, north to south? To the “poles”? How does that work, again?
In both hemispheres to the pole in that hemisphere. See the movie at the beginning of the posting.

u.k.(us) says:
August 29, 2013 at 7:32 pm
I meant the gobs that are free-floating near the center of the earth in zero gravity
The Earth has a SOLID inner core, so no free-floating gobs.
——————–
Not even some sort of plasticized solid ?, the Titanic sank after hitting ice which we know can flow.

But on the Sun, in the example, there would be so much mass overhead, that would also exert gravitational forces, that I cannot see how it would still sum to 29 times Earth
The mass overhead doesn’t matter. Newton proved that.

Would it have helped if I had said IN the Sun? It’s obvious then the mass overhead does matter. From a plane bisecting the Sun, the mass “overhead” does matter as at the center it will cancel out the gravitational force of the mass “underneath”. Move the plane outwards along a radius, up until you clear the Sun, the solar mass overhead still matters as its gravitational force will be partially counteracting that of the solar mass underneath.

And Newton proved it doesn’t matter? It has been awhile since I got my BA in Physics, that did not get used. Perhaps I forgot it. Got a link to an explanatory text?

(Phys.org) —We all know that the Earth rotates beneath our feet, but new research from ANU has revealed that the center of the Earth is out of sync with the rest of the planet, frequently speeding up and slowing down.

Associate Professor Hrvoje Tkalcic from the ANU College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences and his team used earthquake doublets to measure the rotation speed of Earth’s inner core over the last 50 years.

They discovered that not only did the inner core rotate at a different rate to the mantle – the layer between the core and the crust that makes up most of the planet’s interior – but its rotation speed was variable.

“This is the first experimental evidence that the inner core has rotated at a variety of different speeds,” Associate Professor Tkalcic said.

“We found that, compared with the mantle, the inner core was rotating more quickly in the 1970s and 1990s, but slowed down in the 80s. The most dramatic acceleration has possibly occurred in the last few years, although further tests are needed to confirm that observation.
…

Lately the Sun’s magnetic field has decreased, while the inner core has dramatically sped up.

Faster rotation 1970’s and 1990’s, slowed down in 1980’s, and also apparently was slow in the 2000’s.

Who’s going to be the first to claim a tie to the approximately 11-yr sunspot cycle?

Who already has these rotational speed changes clearly visible in their already-published graphs and charts?

There does not seem to be a good reason not to suppose that there are one or more zones circulating below the first two. I wondered about the impact of the speed estimate under the surface if this is the case. There is only so much stirring energy from rotation. Perhaps it is distributed over a greater depth. The sun is full of surprises.

I look forward to an estimation of the activity of the next two cycles based on this new understanding because I will probably be around long enough to see them. I will keep watch.

kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
August 29, 2013 at 9:06 pmLately the Sun’s magnetic field has decreased, while the inner core has dramatically sped up.
Faster rotation 1970′s and 1990′s, slowed down in 1980′s, and also apparently was slow in the 2000′s. Who’s going to be the first to claim a tie to the approximately 11-yr sunspot cycle?
Who already has these rotational speed changes clearly visible in their already-published graphs and charts?

The 1970s solar activity was lower than that of the 2000s.

The outer core is effectively a superconductor and does not allow any magnetic fields to penetrate more than a few meters into the outer core, thus screening the inner core from any external magnetic forces.

kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
August 29, 2013 at 9:06 pm
<i.Lately the Sun’s magnetic field has decreased, while the inner core has dramatically sped up.http://www.leif.org/research/Geomagnetic-Earth.png shows how changing external magnetic fields propagate into the Earth and stop and when they meet the outer core [there diminishing wiggles].

Got it. The infinitely thin spherical shells “overhead”, thinking spherically instead of planar, will exert zero net gravitational force on the object within the Sun. Only the remaining sphere underneath will be exerting gravitational force, easily calculable as a point mass at that radius.

Hey, I know better than to expect them to propagate inward much. Mainly because the mantle material is basically like thick asphalt loaded with magnetic materials. Just as asphalt is used for sound dampening (you’ll likely find pads of it under your car’s carpeting), any physical movement of the magnetic materials will be dampened, sapping energy.

Please advise if I’m in error about that.

From Leif Svalgaard on August 29, 2013 at 9:17 pm:

The outer core is effectively a superconductor and does not allow any magnetic fields to penetrate more than a few meters into the outer core, thus screening the inner core from any external magnetic forces.

Which takes care of the rest.

Except now people may think there’s a “superconducting motor” for our planet’s core, thus it doesn’t need as much energy to speed up and slow down as otherwise… People are funny that way.

Eric Gisin says:
August 29, 2013 at 9:50 pm
<i.There has to be some inner convection, otherwise He buildup in the core would stop H fusion.
I don’t think so. If fusion is throttled a bit because of less fuel, the core would contract and the temperature would go up. The fusion is extremely temperature dependent so even a tiny increase in temperature is enough to compensate for the slightly lower concentration of H. Convection is only possible if [roughly] the pressure gradient is smaller than the density gradient and in the solar core it is not, so the core is stable.

kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
August 29, 2013 at 10:00 pmExcept now people may think there’s a “superconducting motor” for our planet’s core, thus it doesn’t need as much energy to speed up and slow down as otherwise… People are funny that way.
Most people are reasonable. But there is always a small number who is total nuts and will believe anything or peddle anything. We have a good sampling here on WUWT, so expect some of them to come out of the woodwork.

People have asked about the influence on the dynamo theory of the double cell. Here is a paper that discusses this http://arxiv.org/pdf/1302.0943v2.pdf The main conclusion is “The mean-ﬁeld dynamo model that includes the subsurface rotational shear layer and the double-cell (in radius) meridional circulation, indicated by the recent helioseismology results, can reproduce the solar magnetic cycles in the form of the time-latitude “butterfly” diagrams. The double-cell circulation affects the distribution of the magnetic field with radius in the convection zone, increasing the field concentration to the convection zone boundaries, and in the middle of the convection zone where the two cells converge. The latter effect can lead to a non-monotonic proﬁle of the amplitude of the large-scale poloidal magnetic field in response to an increase of the circulation speed. The models qualitatively explains the observed synchronization between the polar magnetic field strength and the sunspot number”

Brad says:
August 29, 2013 at 9:38 pmDoes this provide any insight into the Livingston and Penn Effect or the possibility of a coming minima, or both?
I don’t think so [but don’t know, of course]. I think the L&P effect is rather a surface phenomenon.

Lief, I would like to ask you a couple of questions, the atmosphere on planets seems to be governed by chaos with strange attractors that give some harmony in the chaos. Examples are the big red spot on Jupiter the black spot on Neptune and the strange but constant hexagon cloud on pole of Saturn. The red spot and the dark spot as are many other features on planets always at 19.5 north or south latitude.

My questions , could the cyclical behaviour of the sun be it chasing its strange attractors and if so finding them would give a good insight into its antics.

Secondly as on the planets are there any of the solar activity centered around 19.5 latitude north or south. I understand that these are odd questions but if you have any information it would be received with thanks.

kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
August 29, 2013 at 10:13 pmNow come on, we both know sometimes the physics just doesn’t become clear without the proper frame of reference.
Knowing the proper frame is understanding of the physics.

wayne Job says:
August 29, 2013 at 10:14 pmMy questions , could the cyclical behaviour of the sun be it chasing its strange attractors and if so finding them would give a good insight into its antics.
I don’t think so as the sun exhibits both deterministic and random behavior at the same time. Random is not the same as chaotic, and I don’t think the sun is chaotic as a whole.

Secondly as on the planets are there any of the solar activity centered around 19.5 latitude north or south. I understand that these are odd questions but if you have any information it would be received with thanks.
There does not seem to be anything special on the sun about 19.5 latitude.

I noticed in Fig 1 the flows were oriented perfectly north-south. However, angular momentum (i.e. conservation of a.m.) would alter the flow, and produce a lateral component, unless somehow the energy is bled off in another process. Using the Mark I lipid-ion computer, I’m trying to create my own flow model. Wouldn’t the flow likely be somewhat like a screw? Although perhaps there would not be even one complete turn from the equator to near the pole. I imagine then the flow might dive under and follow almost the same track back to the equator, offset to some degree because of the change in depth.

Leif, look on the bright side. You don’t have the guy we’re not to bring up and his iron core sun junk. No Maya apocalyptic pole shift, rotation reversal nutters show up anymore. Remember the guy Red something, Red Dawn or Red Day? You blew a gasket at the mods for that one.

These Solar threads are still more entertaining than fight night on Mexican TV but overall they have improved a lot. And you still make wuwt so good.

I however, I do fear that there is already large scale fiddling going on, trying to hide the decline.
temps are have fallen at least 0.17 since 2002 of my own data set so there is already a discrepancy. Ignoring the exact sequence of sunspots, over time, I find an average of
75 during a warming period (1950-1995)
and an average of
63 during a cooling period (1904-1950)
hence we are now in a cooling period.,….
(1995-2039)
So the theory of the sun causing certain climate patterns/cycles at regular intervals firmly stands.

Kadaka: A mischaracterization of a situation is not a “different frame-of-reference,” at least in physics. You mischaracterized the sun as part of a sphere with an earth-size sphere hanging from the flat part.

Leif: I think you should have known right away that Kadaka was doing this and that he didn’t know that exterior shells don’t count.

Robertv says:
August 29, 2013 at 3:17 pm
‘If fusion in the core is what powers the Sun ,coronal temperatures (1,000,000 K) should not be higher than surface temperatures (5778 K)’

So on the Sun we see no Greenhouse effect. The corona does not back radiate to the surface or would surface temperatures even be lower without the extreme hot coronal temperatures?
What do we know of the mass of the coronal layer ? Could it give enough pressure on the surface to heat it up to 5778 K
If the atmosphere can heat the surface temperature of Venus up to 740 K

Kadaka: A mischaracterization of a situation is not a “different frame-of-reference,” at least in physics. You mischaracterized the sun as part of a sphere with an earth-size sphere hanging from the flat part.

Strange, I was certain I was thinking of a single sphere with an intersecting plane, and was getting hung up by thinking about the amounts of mass of the sphere above and below the plane. But obviously you know better what I was thinking than I knew what I myself was thinking.

Leif: I think you should have known right away that Kadaka was doing this and that he didn’t know that exterior shells don’t count.

I wasn’t thinking in terms of shells, but of the intersecting plane. And yes, I didn’t know exterior shells didn’t count. If I could do the math, I would have come up with the same answers by my approach, the fundamentals were sound.

But with the simplification of a perfect sphere which can be divided into perfect spherical shells, the shell theorem does make things much nicer.

I was thinking in more general terms, when a specific simpler approach was available. But what if the object studied was not a sphere, but an ovoid? How would you proceed?

Leif, why would the disappearing sunspots and the hemispheric asymmetry happen together, as in the Maunder Minimum’s ‘large, sparse, and primarily southern hemispheric’ sunspots, and possibly as now? I’ve long been reminded I’ve longed for a van de Graff.
=============

Robertv says:
August 30, 2013 at 2:55 amWhat do we know of the mass of the coronal layer ? Could it give enough pressure on the surface to heat it up to 5778 K
The corona is extremely tenuous and exerts very little pressure on the surface [about 1/1000 of the pressure on your ear drum during a Rock concert] so does not heat up the surface.

kim says:
August 30, 2013 at 4:34 amLeif, why would the disappearing sunspots and the hemispheric asymmetry happen together
I think coincidence as the L&P effect may be a surface phenomenon, but don’t really know.

Bill Illis says
It is NOT responsible for the current slight cooling trend on Earth.

Henry says
Sorry Bill, it is fact not the cooling of the sun that causes the cooling on earth.
Indeed, I predicted that the sun could be hotting up a little bit, although that is really not very much, as you seem capable of measuring.
But there is a slight re-distribution of the sun’s output, leading to an increase tin he photons with very short wavelength, leading to an increase in ozone and peroxide/nitric oxides at the TOA,
With those components’s concentration increasing TOA, more normal sunlight, especially, F-UV, is deflected now, which leads to the cooling period.

Dr S, a bit OT, but looks like the sun’s convective layer is ~1/3 the total radius. Small M stars have convection all the way to the center. Does that mean larger stars can eventually get so massive that the convective layer goes to zero?

beng says:
August 30, 2013 at 7:18 amDoes that mean larger stars can eventually get so massive that the convective layer goes to zero?

Convection depends on pressure and density, i.e. indirectly on the temperature gradient. If the gradient is large, i.e. the temperature change with radius is steep, you get convection. The outer layers of a star are more opaque than the inner layers which are hotter and therefore more completely ionized [which makes them opaque].
There are basically two different fusion processes in normal stars: the proton-proton [the pp] reaction and the Carbon-Nitrogen-Oxygen [CNO] reaction [which also burns Hydrogen, using Carbon, Nitrogen, and Oxygen as catalysts]. The pp reaction dominates at lower temperature [as in the Sun and lower-mass stars] and gives you a convection zone in the outer layers [stretching all the way to the core for the lowest masses] and a radiation-dominated [no convection] core. In more massive stars, the CNO reaction [which is much more efficient than the pp reaction] dominates resulting in a core temperature far higher than for pp-stars. That favors convection, so high-mass stars have convective cores. As you can see, it can become quite complicated.

kim says:
August 30, 2013 at 7:26 amI can’t get van de Graff out of mind. He tickles.
A van de Graff machine works because the top dome is supported by an insulator which prevents the charge from running away. In the solar plasma there is no handy insulator around…

“The sun cannot be described by partial differential equations having a few [or only two as you will have it] dominant modes.”

What a silly thing to say. It is readily apparent in the data.

===

Indeed. And when this was discussed some time back when Bart originally presented this , I did not see much but the usual condescension and insults from Leif.

Occam’s razor would favour a simple explanation and I think Bart’s analysis was remarkably concise.

Condescension is common from those who spend much of their time in a teaching context. Insults are a common defensive reaction.

Now I can understand why someone who has invested their whole career on a subject would feel threatened by such a simple explanation of the multitude of observed periods. Especially when Bart says it only took him half a day to do. That does not detract from the elegant simplicity of Bart’s model.

If Bart’s “hammer” cracks this particular nut, he may well have got to the kernel of the problem.

That, IMO, deserves respectful consideration rather than condescension and insults.

Leif Svalgaard says:
u.k.(us) says:
August 29, 2013 at 5:39 pm
The deeper one goes into any gravity well, the more it “weighs” ?
“No, the weight usually goes up in the beginning, to a maximum, then declines to zero at the very center.”

I know that inside the event horrizon of a black hole nothing is or can be known but take a shot anyway. Using general relativity and not Newtonian physics, zero gravity at the theoretical singularity?

And since time slows to a stop there, would it not take infinite time for the supposed sigularity to ever form?

Greg Goodman says:
August 30, 2013 at 8:29 amOccam’s razor would favour a simple explanation and I think Bart’s analysis was remarkably concise.
Einstein once said “make it as simple as possible, but no simpler”. And Occam’s razor does not favor a simple solution, instead is says “Plurality must never be posited without necessity”, that is: do not invent new explanations when they are not necessary. Bart’s ‘beating’ explanation is one such extra and not necessary ‘explanation’.
The problem with Bart is that his ‘explanation’ is too simplistic and does not apply to the real sun, but with his extremely narrow focus he cannot see that, combined with exaggerated opinion about his ability. It is a common fallacy to favor simplicity when knowledge is lacking and you are a good example of that. There is a word for it: ‘dumbing down’.

Jim G says:
August 30, 2013 at 8:32 amI know that inside the event horizon of a black hole nothing is or can be known but take a shot anyway
We are getting way off topic here. Perhaps since the concepts of space and time break down, we can bypass the issue by noting that the concept of a ‘center’ also breaks down :-)

Leif Svalgaard says:
Clarification of my question:
I know the difference between weight and gravity but the real issue would revolve around the formation of the singularity, the inherrant time dilation in such a gravity well and any non-instantaneous matter movement and distribution within the event horrizon moving towards its center (the supposed singularity). Weightless at an infinitely small and infinitely dense point, if such exists?

Jim G says:
August 30, 2013 at 8:51 amWeightless at an infinitely small and infinitely dense point, if such exists?
My view is that the gravity well is infinitely deep and you can never get to the ‘bottom’, but since you are in free fall you are weightless all the way, outside the horizon, crossing the horizon, and for ever after falling towards the infinitely far away singularity.

“We are getting way off topic here. Perhaps since the concepts of space and time break down, we can bypass the issue by noting that the concept of a ‘center’ also breaks down :-)”

Well then, any time dilation effects within the center of a high mass star and the effects it would have upon all of the years it takes for the convections and mass and energy movements within the star?

Leif Svalgaard says:
August 30, 2013 at 8:56 am
Jim G says:
August 30, 2013 at 8:51 am
Weightless at an infinitely small and infinitely dense point, if such exists?
“My view is that the gravity well is infinitely deep and you can never get to the ‘bottom’, but since you are in free fall you are weightless all the way, outside the horizon, crossing the horizon, and for ever after falling towards the infinitely far away singularity.”

Very interesting and I thank you for your concept. Kind of goes away from the concept of length contaction in infinite gravity which is supposed to be same as at the speed of light. Would think possibly the opposite with instantaneous arrival, avoiding the time dilation.

Leif Svalgaard says:
August 30, 2013 at 9:05 am
Jim G says:
August 30, 2013 at 9:01 am
Well then, any time dilation effects within the center of a high mass star …
“No, because gravity is zero at the center.”

Jim G says:
August 30, 2013 at 9:06 amKind of goes away from the concept of length contraction in infinite gravity which is supposed to be same as at the speed of light.
Since you never get to the ‘bottom’, gravity is never infinite.

Jim G says:
August 30, 2013 at 9:09 am“No, because gravity is zero at the center.”
Is this per general relativity as well as Newtonian gravity?
General relativity only deviates from Newton when gravity is high and since gravity falls to zero approaching the center, I would say that the shell-theorem also holds in general relativity. There is an ongoing discussion of GR in ‘Extended Bodies’. You can get a feeling for it by visiting http://arxiv.org/abs/1103.0543 but now I think we are way off, off, off topic with little return for the effort expended.

Leif Svalgaard says:
August 30, 2013 at 9:10 am
Jim G says:
August 30, 2013 at 9:06 am
Kind of goes away from the concept of length contraction in infinite gravity which is supposed to be same as at the speed of light.
“Since you never get to the ‘bottom’, gravity is never infinite.”

Length contraction and time dilation are supposed to occur all along the way just increasing as velocity and/or gravity increase. Time has been proven to be slower as one moves away from the very minor gravity well of the Earth and increase as one goes deeper into the well. I am not sure about proofs of length contractions under similar circumstances.

Leif Svalgaard says:
August 30, 2013 at 9:16 am
Jim G says:
August 30, 2013 at 9:09 am
“No, because gravity is zero at the center.”
Is this per general relativity as well as Newtonian gravity?
“I think we are way off, off, off topic with little return for the effort expended.”

Jim G says:
August 30, 2013 at 9:17 amLength contraction and time dilation are supposed to occur all along the way just increasing as velocity and/or gravity increase
Einstein’s point was that in free fall there is no gravity hence no time dilation or length contraction so none of those effects for an observer falling towards the singularity.

No, you are the victim of it. The methodology I speak of is not mine. It has been used extensively and successfully in uncountable applications where the mathematical framework is <i<precisely the same. It is applicable here, trivially so, to someone who works with the theory almost every day, churning out products which actually work to paying customers.

You are not familiar with it and so, in true D&K style, you dismiss it. That’s your loss, and now you’ve backed yourself into a corner. I expect that kind of chest-thumping bravado from a kid fresh out of school. You have no excuse for your immaturity.

Greg Goodman says:
August 30, 2013 at 8:29 am

Thanks. Good comments. But Leif has backed himself into a corner. It’s no longer about science, and hasn’t been for quite some time. It’s about establishing alpha supremacy. Very sad.

Leif Svalgaard says:
August 30, 2013 at 9:29 am
Jim G says:
August 30, 2013 at 9:17 am
Length contraction and time dilation are supposed to occur all along the way just increasing as velocity and/or gravity increase
“Einstein’s point was that in free fall there is no gravity hence no time dilation or length contraction so none of those effects for an observer falling towards the singularity”

There are experiments that indicate that time dilation has been measured on orbiting satelites in free fall and I have heard of this before. But then that could be due to velocity.

The angular momentum theory makes much more sense then what this latest study is trying to convey.

The angular mometum theory if one uses past history has shown that when the planets exert a certain amount of angular momentum upon the sun due to their orbital relationship about the sun, that the sun has entered either a very active period or inactive period.

Geoff Sharp has used this theory to make his solar forecast which have been quite accurate.

The study that was done really is saying nothing new, it is just an expansion on what they had already thought. The angular momentum theory gives a cause and an effect, this latest theory can not explain why the sun does what it does ,it just says it does what it does.

Bart says:
August 30, 2013 at 9:39 amNo, you are the victim of it. The methodology I speak of is not mine. It has been used extensively and successfully in uncountable applications
So is a hammer, but that does not mean it is the proper tool for everything.

now you’ve backed yourself into a corner. I expect that kind of chest-thumping bravado from a kid fresh out of school. You have no excuse for your immaturity.
I’m in a very comfortable corner. And no excuse is needed. I repeat: your analysis [no matter how well executed and how much your customers pay for your expertise] is not applicable to the real sun, nor is it universally applicable to every phenomenon in the Universe.

It’s about establishing alpha supremacy. Very sad.
Your comments show who is seeking alpha supremacy [you, in case you didn’t get it]. And it is indeed sad, but such is life. You are not alone.

Jim G says:
August 30, 2013 at 9:40 amThere are experiments that indicate that time dilation has been measured on orbiting satelites in free fall and I have heard of this before. But then that could be due to velocity.
The issue is ‘time dilation’ with respect to whose time? Time dilation is a difference of elapsed time between two events as measured by observers either moving relative to each other or differently situated from gravitational masses. For a single observer falling into a singularity there is no time dilation, because there is no other observer to compare with. Now, for an observer outside of the horizon watching you falling towards to hole, the situation is different: he would see you slow down as you approach the horizon and actually never crossing it [light from you would also be increasingly red-shifted so he can eventually not see you]. The difference in experience is why the theory is called ‘relativity’.

Not sure what you guys are discussing, but yes, time dilation occurs on orbiting satellites. The higher your orbit, the faster your clock relative to one on Earth. However, at circular orbit altitude of approximately 1.5 times Earth radius and below, your orbital speed starts to slow down your clock more than the weaker gravity speeds it up, and time runs faster on the Earth.

GPS satellite clocks are corrected by the appropriate factor so that they will measure time as it would be on the surface of the Earth. See chapter 18 “Introduction to Relativistic Effects on the Global Positioning System” here.

Salvatore Del Prete says:
August 30, 2013 at 10:30 amCall me simple ,but I want predictions based on these theories, not just theory. Back it up with prediction.
1) they are measurements, not theories.
2) there is theory interpreting the data, I mention one here:
Leif Svalgaard says:
August 29, 2013 at 10:09 pm
“The models qualitatively explains the observed synchronization between the polar magnetic field strength and the sunspot number”
3) there are succesful predictions based on the polar magnetic field, e.g.http://www.leif.org/research/Cycle%2024%20Smallest%20100%20years.pdf
4) once the new polar field has been established [in about three years time] we can make a good prediction for cycle 25.
So, there you have it. Alternatively, you can use Bart’s ‘model’ to get your predictions :-)

Henry@Leif
You are such a fraud. For one thing, why don’t you stop talking to your alter ego’s on this thread as if you were arguing with yourself (perhaps to attract high visiting numbers?)
Do you honestly think that we don’t see through you?

Henry@Leif
We did look at that before, remember?
It seems you are admitting now that 2016 is an important date,
as was 1972.http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2012/10/02/best-sine-wave-fit-for-the-drop-in-global-maximum-temperatures/
It must be something to do with the planets? Or what?
In 2016 we will be at deep end of the polar fields, both sides, and in 1972, if we go back, there must be a dead end stop (at the top/bottom)
Why don’t you put those results of the +/- polar field into binomials (parabolic/hyperbolic) and give us your comment as to why what happens (if we observe the best fit)
If you give me the data, I can also do it myself, but I don’t have time, for some time.

Well, I regret our discussions have degenerated into mutual abuse for whatever reason, and whomever is more or less at fault. I am completely aware that your experience in solar dynamics is vast and knowledgeable, which is why I for one would never call you incompetent. But, my experience in matters dynamical and mathematical is similarly vast, and successful, I might add. Of course, I can just say that, but you don’t know me from Adam, and are justifiably cautious about accepting my input. Unfortunately, I am in a position where my doubts about AGW could materially affect my company’s ability to gain contracts, and I being just one person in the organization whose views are not widely shared within it, would be in the position of harming innocent colleagues and friends.

I would hope that my demonstration of a variety of skills would convince you that I have at least some heft to my claims. In my view, you are looking at the trees, but I am attempting to direct your attention to the forest.

This little olive branch will probably gain me nothing more than additional abuse. At least, that is how it has gone down in the past when I have made overtures. You appear to have a strong inclination to nurse grudges. This is not a very constructive policy. By your response, I will let others judge you. I have offered you my “hammer”. It is a very good hammer, which has seen extensive use. It could help you nail the boards together, if you ever tire of your tongue and groove work.

Leif Svalgaard says:
August 30, 2013 at 10:40 am

“Alternatively, you can use Bart’s ‘model’ to get your predictions”

My “model” is still quite complicated. It is not merely adding a bunch of sinusoids, though with light damping, that may not produce a completely off-base result. I believe Vuk has done so with some inarguable success. My model assumes the quasi-sinusoids arise from lightly damped modes, which represent a truncated modal expansion of a solution to your partial differential equations. These modes are driven by wideband noise, so any prediction from their current state will diverge over time.

A Kalman Filter could be devised for this system. It can be trained with past measurements, and then projected into the future with quantifiable error bars from the Kalman Filter covariance propagation.

I don’t know why but that word “singularity” tickles me. Maybe it reminds me of words like “jocularity”. It is such a funny rolling tongue word. Speaking of fun, those two boys I spoke about on the “eclipse” thread used to end their writing time with me with spelling challenges. We would use a collegiate spelling dictionary to challenge each other on spelling unusual scientific words with lots of Latin components (don’t they all have lots of Latin components?).

Such an approach is very general. Bounded partial differential equations tend to such solutions. The methodology has been employed successfully in a wide variety of applications, including structural vibrations, fluid transport, electrical power subsystems, and electronic devices. There is no reason it should not be applicable to solar dynamics.

Bart says:
August 30, 2013 at 11:09 amWell, I regret our discussions have degenerated into mutual abuse for whatever reason
There is no doubt about your vast expertise in what your do. The issue is whether it is applicable, and I think not.

In my view, you are looking at the trees, but I am attempting to direct your attention to the forest.
Your view is yours, but does not reflect where my attention is, which is very much on the forest.

This little olive branch will probably gain me nothing more than additional abuse.
You are presumptuous.

I have offered you my “hammer”. It is a very good hammer, which has seen extensive use.
In science we judge such statements by further experiments, so apply your hammer on this time series and show the result. This is a simple ‘put up or shut up’ test, and should not be construed as anything else: http://www.leif.org/research/Ap-1844-now.xls . The data are in column D as a function of time in column C.

About ‘incompetence’: I am a very incompetent violin player [and many other things too], but that does not carry any stigmas for me. And you are a very incompetent solar physicist, and that should not carry any stigmas for you either.

Bart says:
August 30, 2013 at 11:16 amThere is no reason it should not be applicable to solar dynamics.
The shoe is on the other foot. One has to show that it is applicable. Now, people have tried Kalman filter techniques from time to time in the hope that they might work, but with generally poor results. Here are some examples: http://sidc.be/sunspot-index-graphics/sidc_graphics.php

Leif’s chart of the ap index since 1844 shows how strong it has been in comparisome to post 2005 ,and shows a more or less active sun, with no real prolonged solar quiet periods. It shows a more or less a steady rhythmic cycle in solar activity although strong.

Hence the correlation between solar activity and climate throughout that time period is obscure.

In contrast let us see what might happen with an ap index sub 5 year after year after year, which very likely occurred during the Maunder /Dalton prolonged solar minimums which in turn were associated with a reduction in global temperatures.

Going forward there is a good chance we could see the ap index average below sub 5 once again.

Janice, IMHO there is no room for color commentary and soft spoken “nice” in scientific discourse. I know whereof I speak. I had to scrub my manuscript of all such brushstrokes. Cold hard facts, keeping feet to the fire of demonstrated plausible and unvarnished mechanism based on unvarnished statistical analysis of hard data, and cold hard feedback is the only way we can stear clear of the same mistakes that invade AGW hysteria among even those with science credentials. I prefer blunt cutting discourse. It leads to improved understanding much quicker than mamby pamby politeness ever could accomplish. That we could pepper AGW blogs with the likes of Leif would end this expensive madness way sooner than what discourse we currently have.

Salvatore Del Prete says:
August 30, 2013 at 11:53 amIn contrast let us see what might happen with an ap index sub 5 year after year after year, which very likely occurred during the Maunder /Dalton prolonged solar minimums
Modern data shows that Ap depends on the interplanetary [i.e. solar] magnetic field, B, [Ap ~ BV^2, where V is solar wind speed]. B is a main factor in modulating cosmic rays. If Ap is low year after year, there will be no modulation of cosmic rays, yet during the Maunder Minimum the cosmic ray modulation was strong [even stronger than the past several cycles]. So, that argues for Ap not being low, year after year.

Salvatore Del Prete says:
August 30, 2013 at 9:57 amThe angular momentum theory makes much more sense then what this latest study is trying to convey.
another example of how simplistic musing crowds out real science. The AM ‘theory’ violates the laws of Nature: http://www.leif.org/EOS/Shirley-MNRAS.pdf

Leif Svalgaard says:
August 30, 2013 at 11:53 amHave a look at http://www.leif.org/EOS/Lomb-Sunspot-Cycle-Revisited.pdf
Nick Lomb concludes: “This study confirms the structure of the sunspot time series demonstrated in paper 1: a stable 11-year periodicity (the Schwabe cycle) that is amplitude and phase modulated by the long-term periodicities discussed above. This clearly implies that a clock mechanism must exist within the Sun for the 11-year periodicity to persist in the solar data as was first suggested by Dicke [10]. Modern theories provide a possible clock mechanism in the conveyor-belt-like meridional circulation between high polar latitudes and the equator. In the Babcock-Leighton models of Charbonneau and Dikpati [11] and [12] remnant magnetic flux from decaying sunspots is transported away from the equator by meridional circulation towards the poles generating the poloidal field of the following cycle. This field is transported to the base of the convection zone where shearing by differential rotation leads to a new toroidal field at low latitudes. Buoyant flux tubes rise to the surface as sunspots. In this way the meridional circulation provides the clock regulating the 11-year cycle and maintaining its continuity. The models predict fluctuations in the meridional circulation and these fluctuations have been observed with the Michelson Doppler Imager on board the SOHO spacecraft [13]. However, according to Charbonneau and Dikpati [11] the meridional circulation can still act as a clock for most of their simulations exhibit ‘good phase locking, in the sense that their cycle periods rarely depart for more than a few consecutive cycles from their average value’. Moreover, the models also reproduce the amplitude-duration anticorrelation that is related to the amplitude-phase relationship discussed in this paper”
Thus connecting with the topic of this thread.

Salvatore Del Prete says:
August 30, 2013 at 12:37 pmThat proves the ap index was low , but in addition studies show the aa index was in the range of 2 or 3 during the Maunder Minimum.
You are not paying attention [but links to studies that peddle 2 or 3 would be welcome]. The modulation of cosmic rays depends on B [and therefore on ap], and the modulation during the Maunder [and Spoerer] minima was as strong as today. The background level is much more dependent on unknown factors, such as the climate itself which exerts significant influence on the level of comic rays.

by EW Cliver – ‎1998 – ‎Cited by 50 – ‎Related articles
We followed the approach of Feynman & Crooker (1978) to relate the 6.9-7.5 nT range of 11 during the Maunder Minimum to solar wind parameters for …

But on the Sun, in the example, there would be so much mass overhead, that would also exert gravitational forces, that I cannot see how it would still sum to 29 times Earth
The mass overhead doesn’t matter. Newton proved that.
……………………………
And Newton proved it doesn’t matter? It has been awhile since I got my BA in Physics, that did not get used. Perhaps I forgot it. Got a link to an explanatory text?……..”””””””

How on earth does one get a BA in Physics ??

I can see how one might get a BA in that globally important, Indonesian Tribal Dance; or

Rural Poetry of Lapp-land. But Physics; since when did that become an art form ??

The aa index is a measure of the disturbance level of the Earth’s magnetic field based on magnetometer observations at two nearly antipodal stations: Hartland observatory in the UK and Canberra observatory in Australia. The following figure shows the aa index since 1868. [http://roma2.rm.ingv.it/en/themes/23/geomagnetic_indices/24/aa_planetary_index]

A NOAA National Geophysical Data Center website states “the overall level of magnetic disturbance from year to year has increased substantially from a low around 1900 Also, the level of mean yearly aa is now much higher so that a year of minimum magnetic disturbances now is typically more disturbed than years at maximum disturbance levels before 1900.” [bold emphasis in original] The following figure is from that website. [http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/stp/geomag/aastar.html]

The following figure shows the yearly average aa index along with vertical dashed lines indicating the solar cycles, for 1844 – 1997 [http://www.ips.gov.au/Educational/3/1/4]

AA Relationship to Temperature

A 1998 paper (Cliver et al, “Solar variability and climate change: Geomagnetic aa index and global surface temperature”, Geophysical Research Letters, Vol.25, 1998) states: “During the past ~120 years, Earth’s surface temperature is correlated with both decadal averages and solar cycle minimum values of the geomagnetic aa index. The correlation with aa minimum values suggests the existence of a long-term (low-frequency) component of solar irradiance that underlies the 11-year cyclic component. Extrapolating the aa-temperature correlations to Maunder Minimum geomagnetic conditions implies that solar forcing can account for ~50% or more of the estimated ~0.7-1.5°C increase in global surface temperature since the second half of the 17th century.” [http://ruby.fgcu.edu/courses/twimberley/EnviroPhilo/Cliver.pdf]

The following figure is from the above paper showing “Comparison of solar cycle minimum values of the geomagnetic aa index(aamin) and () from 1880-1990”

The same paper states: “The correlation we find between the aa baseline and terrestrial surface temperature suggests the existence of a long-term (low-frequency) component of solar irradiance that tracks the average level of geomagnetic (sunspot) activity. In this view, the absence of pronounced 11-year temperature fluctuations is attributed to the damping effect of the thermal inertia of the oceans.”

The following figure shows the Hadley Climatic Research Unit global average

I subscribe to Cliver and the like and not to your opinoins Leif . Time will tell who is correct and who is wrong.
Their are countless studies similar to the few I posted which refute all that Leif tries to convey.

Salvatore Del Prete says:
August 30, 2013 at 1:02 pmI subscribe to Cliver and the like and not to your opinions Leif .
Cliver is a co-author of most of my papers on that subject and agrees with me. You cite an old and obsolete paper [you see, progress does happen]. And there is now general agreement that the aa index is seriously too low before 1957. You might also consult Figure 10 of http://www.leif.org/research/2009JA015069.pdf

Résumé / Abstract
We used a strong (r = 0.96) correlation between 11-year averages of sunspot number (SSN) and the geomagnetic aa index to infer that the mean level of geomagnetic activity during the Maunder Minimum (1645-1715) was approximately a third of that observed for recent solar cycles (∼7 nT vs. ∼24 nT). We determined the variation of 11-year averages of solar wind speed (v) and the southward component of the interplanetary magnetic field (Bs) with cycle-averaged SSN for the two most recent cycles and also compared cycle-averaged variations of v2Bs and aa for the same interval. We then extrapolated these observed solar wind variations to Maunder Minimum conditions (mean SSN of ∼ 2 and mean aa value of ∼ 7 nT) to deduce that, on average, the solar wind during that period was somewhat slower (v = 340 ± 50 km s-1), and the interplanetary magnetic field much smoother (Bs = 0.3±0.1 nT), than at present (∼ 440 km s-1 and ∼ 1.2 nT). Various lines of evidence (including 10Be data) suggest that, despite the virtual absence of sunspots that characterized the Maunder Minimum, the 11-year geomagnetic (solar wind) cycle persisted throughout this period.
Revue / Journal Title
Geophysical research lettersISSN0094-8276CODEN GPRLAJ
Source / Source

There are two sides to this argument, just like the causes for prolonged solar minimum periods and what causes the climate to change which is not co2 ,butprolonged solar changes as shown in this article.

Among the little gems that I got out of this thread; other than the multi-layered rotation cells, was Leif’s statement, that only about 1 in 10,000 hydrogen atoms in the sun (surface ?) is ionized.

I had always pictured that there was just a sea of protons, in a cloud of electrons; (not because of any knowledge to that effect).

So it is nice to know that in our neighborhood plasma gizmo; hot as it is, it is still mostly neutral atoms. Leif sprinkles these things around, and you have to catch them, at the time, or lose out.

No Wiki, is not likely to save you from ignorance.

Encyclopediae seldom tell you anything useful. Oh they are exciting to read, about all kinds of stuff you never knew (or needed), or had the remotest interest in.

But turn to something you want to know, and it is never there; no matter what it is you look up.

It’s called “The Encyclopaedia Syndrome”, and it also infects, all on line help menus or telephone answering machine menus. No matter your problem, that you call for help on, it isn’t one of the things mentioned in the FAQs, and never context related to what you were doing when you got stalled.

I always keep pressing zero, until a human answers, or the phone hangs up.

george e. smith says:
August 30, 2013 at 1:22 pmAmong the little gems that I got out of this thread; other than the multi-layered rotation cells, was Leif’s statement, that only about 1 in 10,000 hydrogen atoms in the sun (surface, yes) is ionized.
Another little gem: the density of the photosphere is only 1/1000 of the air at the surface of the Earth. And the pressure of the corona down on the surface is like that under one foot of a spider. And the energy generation by the fusion at the center is very gentle, like that of a compost heap [no exploding H-bombs]. Lots of those gems around…

We used a strong (r = 0.96) correlation between 11-year averages of sunspot number (SSN) and the geomagnetic aa index to infer that the mean level of geomagnetic activity during the Maunder Minimum (1645–1715) was approximately a third of that observed for recent solar cycles (∼7 nT vs. ∼24 nT). We determined the variation of 11-year averages of solar wind speed (v) and the southward component of the interplanetary magnetic field (Bs) with cycle-averaged SSN for the two most recent cycles and also compared cycle-averaged variations of v²Bs and aa for the same interval. We then extrapolated these observed solar wind variations to Maunder Minimum conditions (mean SSN of ∼ 2 and mean aa value of ∼ 7 nT) to deduce that, on average, the solar wind during that period was somewhat slower (v = 340 ± 50 km s−1), and the interplanetary magnetic field much smoother (Bs = 0.3±0.1 nT), than at present (∼ 440 km s−1 and ∼ 1.2 nT). Various lines of evidence (including 10Be data) suggest that, despite the virtual absence of sunspots that characterized the Maunder Minimum, the 11-year geomagnetic (solar wind) cycle persisted throughout this period.

Salvatore Del Prete says:
August 30, 2013 at 1:26 pmsep 2012 same
In your zeal, you overlook that the reference is to that same old obsolete paper. It just happens to be included in the publisher’s catalog in 2012.

Aa and Ap index are closely related (se wiki definitions).
Some time ago, I compiled volcanic index for the N. Hemisphere’s high latitudes and surprise, surprisehttp://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/Ap-VI.htm
Since according to our Solar Sage solar activity can not be a trigger for volcanic activity, there is the inverse possibility.
Oh no, no, I am not suggesting (not as yet, but you never know) that volcanic eruptions affect solar activity.
What I was about to say, before I digressed, is that volcanic activity has short term effect on the Earths magnetic field, and this is registered by the magnetometers as the Ap/Aa magnetic variability.
This would render Ap and Aa indices somewhat less important metrics of the past or present solar activity.
Nonsense, I hear.
Well, you do have one extra choice, in addition to the three mentioned above, and that is ‘ a coincidence’.
Just ignore it, and do keep trashing the empty straw.

vukcevic says:
August 30, 2013 at 2:41 pmvolcanic activity has short term effect on the Earths magnetic field, and this is registered by the magnetometers as the Ap/Aa magnetic variability.
No, there is no such influence, unless the volcano erupts under the observatory.Nonsense, I hear.
When you know it is nonsense, why bother us with it?

Volcanic eruptions are accompanied by prolong pre- & post earthquake activity. It is well known fact that there are strong geomagnetic disturbances at the time of strong quakes. Here is one of the more recent and best known examples:
Over and out.

vukcevic says:
August 30, 2013 at 2:58 pmIt is well known fact that there are strong geomagnetic disturbances at the time of strong quakes.
no, that is not well known, in fact there is no effect, unless you are just on top of the earthquake.

Interiesting. I wonder if there is a similar structure in the upper atmosphere, with a counter flowing cell in the stratosphere above the known lower cell, and what effect that would have on atmospheric models.

kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
August 30, 2013 at 3:26 pmHey Leif, there’s another one about to go over to the Dark Nutty Side, comparing SSN (they just discovered the SIDC monthly graph) to Earth climate

As Jack Eddy remarked “there is a hypnotism about cycles that seems to attract people. It draws all kinds of creatures out of the woodwork”. Having said that he went on to rediscover the Maunder Minimum…

anengineer says:
August 30, 2013 at 3:36 pmI wonder if there is a similar structure in the upper atmosphere, with a counter flowing cell in the stratosphere above the known lower cell
There is a circulation in the upper atmosphere. It is however not a counter-flow:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brewer-Dobson_circulation

Dear Moderators, hasn’t “Salvatore Del Prete” crossed over to “thread spamming” yet?
—————————————————————————————————————-
That thought has crossed my mind, also. I have never had to scroll past so much blank space before, on this site.

There are a lot of folks still thinking the Sun has hold of the climate variation valve. Even Lord Monckton thinks this and he is on the climate stage saying it. I for one do not mind Salvatore bringing forth his pet theories. It allows examination of an unfortunately broadly head view out there in publicland.

Pamela Gray says:
August 30, 2013 at 5:08 pmI for one do not mind Salvatore bringing forth his pet theories.
Neither do I, if he could do that without the extraneous fluff and snide comments [“Leif you are just amusing, nothing more”]. On the other hand, we have heard his opinion so often that it would be good if he could wait with more until he has something new to say.

..The latter effect can lead to a non-monotonic proﬁle of the amplitude of the large-scale poloidal magnetic field in response to an increase of the circulation speed. The models qualitatively explains the observed synchronization between the polar magnetic field strength and the sunspot number”..
—
This sounds backwards to me..
More like a squelching of the poloidal magnetic field gradually began occurring first..
With a decrease in the polar rotation part of the solar differential rotation..
Then the increase of equatorial rotation..
And shearing of emerging flux ropes..
Leading to no spots for Ol Sol..

Which can be seen in the more comet like shape that the heliosphere bubble is in now..the squashed field.

But that is not why I’m here today..

J.G.Luhmann has some interesting work on a flux rope (HUGE FLuX RoPes) in the ionosphere of Mercury. Talk about a feed back loop, back into the solar extended corona when that puppy snaps..

[1] The Venus ionospheric response to solar and solar wind
variations is most evident in its magnetic field properties.
Early Pioneer Venus observations during the solar maximum
revealed that the Venus ionosphere exhibits two magnetic
states depending on the solar wind dynamic pressure conditions:
magnetized ionosphere with large-scale horizontal
magnetic field; or unmagnetized ionosphere with numerous
small-scale thin structures, so-called flux ropes.

Here we report yet another magnetic state of Venus’ ionosphere, giant
flux ropes in the magnetized ionosphere, using Venus Express magnetic
field measurements during solar minimum.
These giant flux ropes all have strong core fields and diameters of
hundreds of kilometers, which is about the vertical
dimension of the ionosphere. This finding represents the first
observation of these giant flux ropes at Venus. The cause of
these giant flux ropes remains unknown and speculative…

Would any one care to comment about Venus getting wrapped in a “giant flux rope?”

Carla says:
August 30, 2013 at 5:36 pmThen the increase of equatorial rotation..And shearing of emerging flux ropes..Leading to no spots for Ol Sol..
That would be nice, but, unfortunately, is not the way it works. The new cycle is build from the debris from the old cycle.

Which can be seen in the more comet like shape that the heliosphere bubble is in now..the squashed field.
Whatever happens out at the edge of the heliosphere has no influence on solar activity. The solar wind sweeps everything out. And the heliosphere is not an analog for the solar convection zone anyway.

J.G.Luhmann has some interesting work on a flux rope (HUGE FLuX RoPes) in the ionosphere of Mercury. Talk about a feed back loop, back into the solar extended corona when that puppy snaps..
Mercury or Venus? Doesn’t matter, the solar corona will not know. No feed back loop of consequence. The horse has already left the barn.

“These giant flux ropes all have strong core fields and diameters of hundreds of kilometers, which is about the vertical dimension of the ionosphere. This finding represents the first observation of these giant flux ropes at Venus. The cause of these giant flux ropes remains unknown and speculative…”
Would any one care to comment about Venus getting wrapped in a “giant flux rope?”
Don’t sound that ‘giant’ to me, but I guess every paper has to be sexed up a bit nowadays to appeal to the peanut gallery…
The Earth is wrapped in flux ropes a million miles across every week or so…http://www.vsp.ucar.edu/Heliophysics/pdf/MoldwinM_MagneticFluxRopesSpacePlasmas_07.pdf

“There are a lot of folks still thinking the Sun has hold of the climate variation valve.”

That appears to suggest you do not believe it. What is your hypothesis, then, for what is driving temperature variations? Does not all the heat ultimately have to be derived from the Sun? What is modulating the heat flows from the Sun if not direct variation at the source, in your opinion?

..B is a main factor in modulating cosmic rays. If Ap is low year after year, there will be no modulation of cosmic rays, yet during the Maunder Minimum the cosmic ray modulation was strong [even stronger than the past several cycles]. So, that argues for Ap not being low, year after year.
—
What if during the Maunder Min., the amount of cosmic rays in the solar neighborhood, were less than they are now, for this Modern Min.? Like maybe there are more now than then in the local solar neighborhood. They have seen them coming from two different regions, GCR, plus the ACR (anomalous cosmic rays) factor.

Bart says:
August 30, 2013 at 6:29 pmWhat is modulating the heat flows from the Sun if not direct variation at the source
Try your hammer on the global temperature. If there is, as you suggest, a direct relationship, then you should find the same two ‘cycles’ beating against each other. If you do not, then there are other factors involved, or the relationship is not ‘direct’.

Carla says:
August 30, 2013 at 6:39 pmWhat if during the Maunder Min., the amount of cosmic rays in the solar neighborhood, were less than they are now, for this Modern Min.? Like maybe there are more now than then in the local solar neighborhood.
There were an excess of cosmic rays during the Maunder Minimum. There are indications that the excess may be climate related [solar activity is only one of several factors that determine the flux of cosmic rays that reach the atmosphere].They have seen them coming from two different regions, GCR, plus the ACR (anomalous cosmic rays) factor.
The ACR have generally much lower energy than the CGRs and are not likely to have any climate effect or to affect the amount of 10Be and 14C generated.

The ACR have generally much lower energy than the CGRs and are not likely to have any climate effect or to affect the amount of 10Be and 14C generated.

—
Yes..those little understood ACR, some of which are produced by solar wind interactions in Earth’s magnetosphere.. and some of them accelerated from solar interactions with interstellar neutrals..yes the little understood, underestimated ACR..

I’m all good with the new model Dr. S., don’t see a problem with that..
.

Short wave IR energy drills deep into the equatorial ocean and can be stored in the ocean. However clouds mitigate the amount of SWIR that drills into equatorial ocean surfaces. These pools of warm or less warm water are globby pools that move along the currents that flow on top, in the middle, and along the bottom of the oceans. When these pools are at the surface, they become powerful sources of weather pattern variation changes that eventually even change the weather patterns over the equatorial oceanic belt, thus changing the cloud cover there. These moving, not well mixed, dynamic pools and waves are not cyclical nor do the effects they cause cancel each other out over time. Which is why you can have randomly occurring short term weather pattern variation change or long term weather pattern variation change that can build on one another creating trends up or down.

That is where the drivers are in my opinion because this highly variable and powerful planet has the most plausible drivers of weather pattern variation change.

Leif Svalgaard says:
August 29, 2013 at 10:11 am
…it takes 250,000 years for the energy released in the core to reach the surface, so we cannot say that the core processes explains 180/360 ‘cycles’.
Bill Illis
How long does it take for energy received from the Sun to migrate its way through all those land, water and atmospheric molecules back out to space.For some it is immediately, for others [e,g, if it reaches the deep ocean of great depth on land] it can take thousands of years.

I thought of the same question but Bill beat me to it. If we restrict the question to IR photons (of the type absorbed by water vapour and CO2) emitted upwards at the earth surface (only air above them), what is the mean time of their escape from the earth’s atmosphere and the tortuosity of their path (actual path / straight line path)? Mean number of interactions?

Another question arising from this thought-provoking research – how do photons interact in a plazma? (Do you get photons in a plazma?) Clearly it is not atomic interactions of absorption / reemission/scatter.

Leif Svalgaard says:
August 30, 2013 at 3:43 pm
As Jack Eddy remarked “there is a hypnotism about cycles that seems to attract people. It draws all kinds of creatures out of the woodwork”. Having said that he went on to rediscover the Maunder Minimum…

By that you mean that the Maunder Minimum was a manifestation of a cyclic phenomenon?

At August 30, 2013 at 12:58 pm you ask kadaka (KD Knoebel) how he got a BA in physics.

Obviously, he qualified from one of the better English universities. They award BA – not BSc – degrees for science courses.

kadaka (KD Knoebel) was claiming he had obtained a ‘better’ science degree than a mere BSc from some ‘red-brick’ uni. but you failed to ‘get it’.

Richard……””””””

Well I only got an ordinary peasant BSc from an ordinary New Zealand University. They give bachelor of Science degrees to people who study science; not Arts,

And since all I studied for four years, was Physics, Pure mathematics, Applied Mathematics, Radio Physics (Electronics and EM propagation), Mathematical Physics, and chemistry (one year) with a one hour class in every subject, every single day of the school year, plus a once a week lab in the Physics courses for another few hours, I didn’t have much free time, to study political science or French Literature.

My son has been going to San Fran State U for at least 13 years trying to get some sort of Movie Arts, and Engineering degree. But he is required to waste most of his time doing remedial English classes and tests, because the majority of the students are non English speakers, so everyone; no exceptions, is required to do English before they can graduate, and waste money paying for it.

SF state U is mostly known for its “School of Racism”. Well they use some euphemism like “ethnic studies” or some such; but yes that’s just blatant racism.

Carsten Arnholm says:
August 30, 2013 at 10:34 pmBy that you mean that the Maunder Minimum was a manifestation of a cyclic phenomenon?
W\hat Eddy noted was the absence of cycles, but today we know that the cycle continued anyway [in cosmic rays].

george e. smith says:
August 30, 2013 at 10:40 pmWell I only got an ordinary peasant BSc from an ordinary New Zealand University. They give bachelor of Science degrees to people who study science; not Arts,

B.A. in physics is quite common in the U.S. Even Harvard and MIT grant it (but they call it A.B.) In the UK, Oxford grants a B.A. in physics. Just Google “B.A. in physics.”

“Arts” doesn’t mean what you seem to take it to mean, but I’m hard put to say what it means. I see one (non-authoritative) source saying that “arts” have to do with “why,” while “sciences” have to do with “how.” The same or another source says that “arts” in “B.A.” no more refers to “art” than “philosophy” in “Ph.D.” refers to philosophy.

It looks to me like fewer physics and math courses are required for a B.A. than for a B.S.

Tom in Florida says: August 30, 2013 at 5:34 pmJeez, we just have Bart bow out and up pops Vuk again

Hi Tom
Many years ago I had to attend Communist youth meetings and listen to the same preaching of self appointed old ‘revolutionaries’. Once or twice I summoned enough courage to voice opposite view, got myself into a lot of trouble, and soon as I got my degree I was off.
Here I only bring to your or others attention, what is in the data and may (or you may think not) be of some relevance. Have another lookhttp://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/Ap-VI.htm
and decide for yourself if worth your attention.
No, you don’t think so. Fine with me, but I wish you did say so.

If I’m not mistaken the ACRs alternate shapes of peaks from cycle to cycle, flat and sharp. With approximately three such peaks in one phase of the PDO, this provides a mechanism for alternating temperature phases of the PDO, if the energy entering the ocean suffers a cosmic ray effect. I’ve been well assured that this is a low order effect, and so probably, but there it is.
======================

Back to van de Graff: there are insulators and there are insulators. Hard to resist ‘insolators’, but it is distinctly peripheral. Why couldn’t a similar effect be acting to make asymmetrical the hemisphericity of the sunspots, slowly now, slowly?
============

Local explosions in an extremely tenuous plasma (corona) can provoce temperatures from 1,000,000 K and higher?

At about 500 kilometers above the photosphere we find the coldest measurable temperature, about 4400 degrees K. The temperature then rises steadily to about 20,000 degrees K at the top of the chromosphere, some 2200 kilometers above the Sun’s surface. Here it abruptly jumps hundreds of thousands of degrees, then continues slowly rising, eventually reaching 2 million degrees in the corona.

Astronomer Fred Hoyle pointed out that with the strong gravity and the mere 5,800-degree temperature at the surface, the Sun’s atmosphere should be only a few thousand kilometers thick, according to the “gas laws” astrophysicists typically apply to such bodies. Instead, the atmosphere balloons out to 100,000 kilometers, where it heats up to a million degrees or more.

This “reverse temperature gradient,” contradicts every original expectation of the fusion model.
In a gravity-driven universe particles are not hot enough to escape such massive bodies, which (in the theory) are attractors only. And yet, the particles of the solar wind continue to accelerate past Venus, Earth, and Mars.

So what force powers the Solar dynamo and the corona at the same time?

vukcevic says:
August 31, 2013 at 12:10 am
“Here I only bring to your or others attention, what is in the data and may (or you may think not) be of some relevance. Have another look http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/Ap-VI.htm
and decide for yourself if worth your attention. No, you don’t think so. Fine with me, but I wish you did say so.”

Vuk, just an attempting to bring a little humor into what has become a rather tiresome thread.
I have looked at all your graphs and am in no position to judge whether they are meaningful or not. I see sometimes they match and sometimes they don’t. What I don’t see is a detailed explanation as to why you are using the formula you devised, what is it based on, what each variable means and if those variables are being applied appropriately. If you have links to that please post them for me. Thanks.

Strange, I was certain I was thinking of a single sphere with an intersecting plane, and was getting hung up by thinking about the amounts of mass of the sphere above and below the plane. But obviously you know better what I was thinking than I knew what I myself was thinking.

I don’t doubt that you were thinking of a single sphere with an intersecting plane, but your argument ignored the solar mass below the surface of, and not part of, the earth-mass sphere. That’s the same as mischaracterizing the situation.

I wasn’t thinking in terms of shells, but of the intersecting plane. And yes, I didn’t know exterior shells didn’t count. If I could do the math, I would have come up with the same answers by my approach, the fundamentals were sound.

I don’t see how you’d have come up with it, even if you had not ignored the solar mass I said you ignored. Can you explain how?

I was thinking in more general terms, when a specific simpler approach was available. But what if the object studied was not a sphere, but an ovoid? How would you proceed?

I’d have to integrate over all points on the ovoid shell. With an ovoid, your weight would not be the same everywhere in the interior, as far as I can see.

kim says:
August 31, 2013 at 2:16 amIf I’m not mistaken the ACRs alternate shapes of peaks from cycle to cycle, flat and sharp.
It is the ordinary CGRs that show the alternation of flat and sharp peaks [controlled by the alternating signs of the solar polar fields].

Robertv says:
August 31, 2013 at 4:43 amLocal explosions in an extremely tenuous plasma (corona) can provoke temperatures from 1,000,000 K and higher?
Exactly! Helped along by upwards travelling magnetohydrodynamic waves dissipating in the corona. It is the very thinness of the corona that makes this possible as not much energy in required.

This “reverse temperature gradient,” contradicts every original expectation of the fusion model.
Fusion takes place in the core and has nothing to do with the corona. It is not a ‘fusion model’. It is a ‘fusion fact’.

In a gravity-driven universe particles are not hot enough to escape such massive bodies
If you boil a pot of water, the steam is hot enough to escape the water and rise. In fact, it is gravity that helps the solar wind to escape at supersonic speeds. The physics is the same as in a de Laval Nozzle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Laval_nozzle : “As a gas enters a nozzle, it is traveling at subsonic velocities. As the throat contracts down the gas is forced to accelerate until at the nozzle throat, where the cross-sectional area is the smallest, the linear velocity becomes sonic. From the throat the cross-sectional area then increases, the gas expands and the linear velocity becomes progressively more supersonic”. Gravity plays the role of the contracting throat and the reduction of gravity with altitude plays the role of the increasing cross-sectional area.

So what force powers the Solar dynamo and the corona at the same time?
None directly, as the two processes are very different.

Sparks says:
August 31, 2013 at 6:57 amHas the speed and variability of the meridional ﬂow have any relationship with the suns core?
Not that we know of, except for the trivial fact that the energy for all solar phenomena ultimately derives from fusion in the core.

From the excerpt ..
..Through removing a systematic center-to-limb effect that was only recently identiﬁed, our analysis corrects and improves the previous solar interior meridional ﬂow proﬁle given by Giles (1999) using a similar analysis procedure. ..

—

Dr. S., in the studies I’ve seen on solar differential rotation, they were near correcting for, some sort of limb effect, which caused errors in the calculation of the polar rotation speed of the solar differential rotation. The equatorial rotation speed has been thought to be accurate, whilst the polar rotation speed was found to be askew..
Once they have the correction, will they be able to extrapolate? that back in time, to correct earlier studies?

Also, note..
Voyager 1 at 35 deg. NORTH lat. and at a distance of 120 AU, is in a magnetic highway region (pile up zone).
The magnetic field they are seeing is that coming from the solar southern hemisphere. So are we saying that the magnetic equator is then north of that or where is the magnetic equator way out there?
Then where is the solar field that is produced in the solar northern hemisphere way out there?
Got this info from AGU Fall 2012 SF video at around 10 minutes in. He describes it as being pushed up at that location. Sounding like the dent region moving.
If you copy and paste the link, don’t use the added periods on the end.

I don’t doubt that you were thinking of a single sphere with an intersecting plane, but your argument ignored the solar mass below the surface of, and not part of, the earth-mass sphere. That’s the same as mischaracterizing the situation.

If you had been following the discussion then you saw the part where that intersecting plane made hemispheres, with the plane then moving outward. Where is this missing mass you speak of there?

Leif and I have completed our frame of reference musings, I see what my problem was there. You cannot even comprehend the one I was trying to use enough to render a competent opinion of what I was showing. Until you do, and can issue a coherent description of what you perceived as an issue, this dialogue is pointless.

August 31, 2013 at 4:43 am
..So what force powers the Solar dynamo and the corona at the same time?
—
Part of coronal heating IMHO will be found in the interactions of solar wind, fields and plasmas in the ‘Super Halo’ region that extends to 1AU. This would include interactions with the inner planets. We do know that a lot of the geomagnetic storm activity we see at Earth, gets ejected back into the ‘Super Halo’ or back into space during reconnection events. (fountains) This little exclusion boundary out at 1AU is a pretty dynamic portion of the solar system activities..

Carla says:
August 31, 2013 at 8:15 amDr. S., in the studies I’ve seen on solar differential rotation, they were near correcting for…
The correction mentioned in the paper is not about differential rotation, but corrects an instrumental artifact specific to the way the instrument works.

The latitudinal extent of the wavy surface is basically determined very close to the Sun. http://www.leif.org/research/On-Becoming-a-Scientist.pdf Slides 10-16 show how magnetic fields from one hemisphere push into the other, so even at northern latitudes we can see fields originating from the southern hemisphere. The ‘bending’ takes place in the outer corona, e.g. as shown in Figures 1 and 2 of the Three Dimensions link.

Carla says:
August 31, 2013 at 8:39 amThis would include interactions with the inner planets. We do know that a lot of the geomagnetic storm activity we see at Earth, gets ejected back into the ‘Super Halo’ or back into space
But is there immediately picked up by the supersonic wind and swept further out away from the Sun. The stuff does not go back to the Sun to heat the corona.

In that AGU video above about the Voyager 1 findings, “the wind has been deflected and pushed up to the northern hemisphere, forming a layer, on the very outer edges of the heliosphere, right next to the heliopause which is the boundary..”

Coincidently, that second stream of GCR they have found, generally speaking comes in from the dent location region in the southern heliospheric hemisphere. Where as the other GCR stream is coming from the Sco Cen association in the headwind direction. This may be another indicator (if GCR gyrate along interstellar field lines) that the heliosphere is located at a filamentary boundary region of sorts.

Carla says:
August 31, 2013 at 9:32 amIn that AGU video above about the Voyager 1 findings, “the wind has been deflected and pushed up to the northern hemisphere, forming a layer, on the very outer edges of the heliosphere, right next to the heliopause which is the boundary..”
I don’t know how many times it is necessary to repeat this: the deflection takes place in the corona, very close to the Sun, within 5 solar radii from the surface. Then the solar wind transports that deflected plasma out to the heliopause.

Now I’m thinking they are looking the wrong way in trying to find the direction of the interstellar magnetic field orientation or which way is the interstellar field going? Maybe coming from the second GCR stream that interstellar field is running parallel to the solar field.

Carla says:
August 31, 2013 at 9:39 amNow I’m thinking they are looking the wrong way in trying to find the direction of the interstellar magnetic field orientation or which way is the interstellar field going?
scientists are not morons. be assured that they think of it in all possible and plausible ways. A simple explanation is that the spacecraft are not yet really in true interstellar space and are simply sampling the solar wind field.

August 31, 2013 at 9:37 am
—
Are you referring to the origination location of the HCS and the kinks and waves we see propagating outwards even out to 100 AU start at about 5 solar re above the solar surface in the corona? This is caused by deflection?

Do GCR gyrating along field lines create waves, are waves turbulence?

And could the heliopause be analogous to Earth’s magnetic pause in its ‘inward and outward’ daily fluctuations. Do these motions also produce waves?

One last question..heh
Does the so called ‘Super Halo’ out to 1AU also have a magnetic pause, that fluctuates inward and outward, that we do not, have not ?? looked for with OUR star? Boy that changes everything.

So.. can we say that within these counter rotating, sub surface meriodonal flows we now see at the sun, are where streamers and pseudo streamers are formed? And have the pseudo streamers (the ones with closed field lines/no escape of solar wind) been dominate throughout cycle 24 and generally on the increase within the counter rotating cells below the surface? Are the polar rotations speed more slower this cycle 24 than the last and before that etc..?

With all this rotational business we might also say solar differential rotation, can be hemispheric. In that if let’s say the oh Northern hemisphere has more active regions, sunspots, the Northern hemisphere will be rigid from the active regions and rotate slower than the southern. This doesn’t take into account the polar rotation. But would affect meriodonal flow and hemispherically too..
wow rotation in the galaxy, in so many places, doing so many different things, makes me kinda dizzy..

Just one more.
If the polar rotation of the sun is less affected by active regions, sunspots etc. because of the benefit of a surface area to limb effect of rotation, what role do pseudo streamers, with no solar wind escape, have on slowing the polar rotation? Like the pseudo streamers just need one more little twist..

Carla says:
August 31, 2013 at 10:09 amAre you referring to the origination location of the HCS and the kinks and waves we see propagating outwards even out to 100 AU start at about 5 solar re above the solar surface in the corona? This is caused by deflection?
Yes, near the Sun the Sun’s polar magnetic field is strong enough to deflect and bend the solar wind; further out, the wind just expands radially and ballistically [like bullets shot from a gun on the Sun]

Do GCR gyrating along field lines create waves, are waves turbulence?
No, they don’t. They are like gnats on the back of an elephant.

And could the heliopause be analogous to Earth’s magnetopause in its ‘inward and outward’ daily fluctuations.
In both cases [but don’t take the analogy too far] the variations are caused by the central body: the tilted Earth rotating [and changing polarity every million years or so] and the wavy HCS also rotating [and the solar polar fields changing polarities].

Do these motions also produce waves?
Some, but the solar wind blows everything outwards.

Carla says:
August 31, 2013 at 10:19 amDoes the so called ‘Super Halo’ out to 1AU also have a magnetopause
You must be referring to the energetic electron flux. In addition to the solar wind there are also Solar Energetic Particles. Those are often emitted in ‘bundles’ [from from flares, for example] or narrow streams. A bundle has a ‘core’ in the middle with particles surrounded by a sheath or halo around the core. Spacecraft at 1 AU have observed those halos and at times even more energetic ones – the ‘superhalos’. So, the halo in a given stream is not surrounding the Sun and is present at all distances [nothing special about 1 AU – which is just where the spacecraft happened to be]

Carla says:
August 31, 2013 at 10:28 amcan we say that within these counter rotating, sub surface meridional flows we now see at the sun, are where streamers and pseudo streamers are formed?
No, the magnetic field that erupts on the surface is formed down there. The streamers and pseudo-streamers are formed in the corona as the plasma adjusts itself to the magnetic fields.etc?
Basically no :-)

Carla says:
August 31, 2013 at 10:32 amwould all that make the HCS wavy also?
the pattern of the magnetic field on the surface and its simplification [as closing loops don’t reach up far enough] in the corona make the waves in the HCS

Carla says:
August 31, 2013 at 10:47 amwow rotation in the galaxy, in so many places, doing so many different things, makes me kinda dizzy..
Each body rotates in its own way, not really governed by the rotation of the Galaxy.

Carla says:
August 31, 2013 at 10:57 amwhat role do pseudo streamers, with no solar wind escape, have on slowing the polar rotation?
None. If you throw a rock up in the air and it falls down again, that act does not slow the Earth’s rotation. Also, the corona is exceedingly tenuous. I noticed up-thread that the pressure of all the stuff in the corona [incl. pseudo-streamers] on the surface is like the pressure under a foot of a spider.

Janice Moore says:
August 31, 2013 at 11:01 am“Science is a blood sport.”
It need not be.
It must be. There is only one truth [as we see it, of course]. We don’t send two spacecraft to Mars using two contradictory theories of gravity, just because we want to be nice to both camps of proponents.

“If there is, as you suggest, a direct relationship, then you should find the same two ‘cycles’ beating against each other.”

Not necessarily. In an AM radio, you have the carrier cycle beating against the amplitude signal. When the signal is rectified and low pass filtered, you retrieve the amplitude signal with the carrier effectively stripped away. Something similar, I believe, would be the likely effective mechanism. Not necessarily the only mechanism affecting temperature, mind you, but one of them. Fed through a system with dominant observed resonances, particularly that associated with the ~60 year observed cycle in the data, this could potentially account for the lion’s share of what has been observed over the past century+.

Yes, I have not proved it. Another analysis waiting from my attention someday. Or, hopefully someone else’s. But, until it has been thoroughly and appropriately investigated, I would caution against making firm conclusions. The heat energy does ultimately have to come from the Sun, after all.

Pamela Gray says:
August 30, 2013 at 8:16 pm

“These moving, not well mixed, dynamic pools and waves are not cyclical nor do the effects they cause cancel each other out over time.”

Bart says:
August 31, 2013 at 11:11 amI would caution against making firm conclusions.
That works both ways. We make conclusions of what is believed to be known at this time. And no conclusion in science is ever ‘firm’. until it has been thoroughly and appropriately investigated
I represent to you that it HAS been so investigated, by hundreds of people. It is still debated for the simple reason that the case for the Sun being a major driver is weak and not compelling enough to be actionable.

Bart says:
August 31, 2013 at 11:38 am“I represent to you that it HAS been so investigated, by hundreds of people.”
So has CAGW. How’s that working out?
Lemme see: 97% of scientists think pretty well. But, they, obviously, do not have your hammer :-)
The point is that you can prove absolutely nothing with signal analysis and statistics. The physics has to be understood. An analogous case is that of whether the Sun is the cause of geomagnetic storms. It took 150 years to figure out what the physics is and data analysis of the geomagnetic record did not help one bit.

Several nights ago, I came across a graph from SIDC that shows the international sunspot number in a monthly format from 1950 to the present. It shows the trend in excess sunspot numbers with either the north hemisphere leading the south, or the south hemisphere leading the north. The graph shows that from slightly before 1950 up until 1972 the north predominates. Then from 1972 till 1974 the south plays a strong role, which is followed by the north resuming the lead until 1980. After 1980 and all the way till 2008, the south dominates in the excess ssn count. Since 2008 the north is now back on top.
The ‘north’ Sun from 1950 till the late 70s led the Earth through a slight cooling period. Then the ‘south’ Sun has a strong show between 1972 through 1974. Is this the beginning of the warming which first shows up in 1977. The ‘south’ Sun,1980 till 2008, leads the Earth through a noticeable warming. Now we are back into a ‘north’ Sun and the Earth has seen a slight cooling since 2006/07. So, why is it that the IPCC doesn’t consider the Sun as having a greater affect. How can this graph correspond so closely to the warming and cooling cycles of the Earth? I was looking at Bob Tisdale,s latest post and his global temp graph. The SIDC graph appears to have good correlation with his graph. Even some of the brief changes, 1 to 2 years of a large change, in excess sunspot numbers seem to show up on Bod Tisdale,s graph.

Here is a link to the graph…http://sidc.oma.be/sunspot-index-graphics/wnosuf.php

Bart says:
August 31, 2013 at 12:08 pmI assume that is tongue-in-cheek.
I assume ‘So has CAGW. How’s that working out?’ was too. At least it was irrelevant.

“The point is that you can prove absolutely nothing with signal analysis and statistics.”
I disagree.
Well, a snake-oil salesman would also disagree that this medicine is useless.

“The physics has to be understood.”
Really? You disagree with this fellow? “Anyone who says that they understand Quantum Mechanics does not understand Quantum Mechanics”
Yes, because you misuse or don’t know the word ‘understand’ in this context. The physics is the precise rules of quantum mechanics. What Feynman was referring to was ‘understanding’ in terms of our usual experience which is something completely different.

“The physics has to be understood… It took 150 years to figure out what the physics is and data analysis of the geomagnetic record did not help one bit.”
IOW, you have to understand the physics in order to understand the physics. You realize this is a tautology?
Nonsense. You have to understand the physics in order to understand the phenomenon. No tautology, just plain talk.

It was completely relevant. Stating that hundreds of people have worked on a problem gives no indication of the quality of their work.

“The physics is the precise rules of quantum mechanics.”

No, those are merely rules. Rules can be derived empirically. How accurate they are often depends on the understanding which goes into them. But, often, such rules are accurate enough for the intended application. Quantum mechanics is an example in which there is really only hazy understanding of the physics, but for which the rules which were worked out perform exceedingly well. The inverse square law of gravity is another example of such rulemaking which was “good enough” for widespread application. The Lorenz transformation preceded understanding how it came about, and was derived empirically.

“You have to understand the physics in order to understand the phenomenon.”

But, understanding is often not necessary to make abundant use of empirically derived knowledge. See above.

Our point of contention should not be whether such rules can be determined with or without in-depth understanding. Clearly, they can. The question is how accurate and useful they can be without that level of understanding. Your claim is that they cannot be very accurate. I claim they can, but proof of my contention is, as we have agreed I think, TBD.

No, they don’t. They are like gnats on the back of an elephant.
—
Well then according to Voyager 1, instead of the gnats gyrating around the magnetic field like they had been, they are NOW running parallel.

Carla says:
August 31, 2013 at 10:19 am
Does the so called ‘Super Halo’ out to 1AU also have a magnetopause

You must be referring to the energetic electron flux. In addition to the solar wind there are also Solar Energetic Particles. Those are often emitted in ‘bundles’ [from from flares, for example] or narrow streams. A bundle has a ‘core’ in the middle with particles surrounded by a sheath or halo around the core. Spacecraft at 1 AU have observed those halos and at times even more energetic ones – the ‘superhalos’. So, the halo in a given stream is not surrounding the Sun and is present at all distances [nothing special about 1 AU – which is just where the spacecraft happened to be]

—
This ‘Super Halo’ out to 1AU is a consistent and persistent. Whether there be solar cycle activity or not.

Abstract
..The density of superhalo electrons
appears to show a solar-cycle variation at solar minimum, while the power-law spectral index ã has no solar-cycle
variation. These quiet-time superhalo electrons are present even in the absence of any solar activity—e.g., active
regions, flares or microflares, type III radio bursts, etc.—suggesting that they may be accelerated by processes such
as resonant wave–particle interactions in the interplanetary medium, or possibly by nonthermal processes related
to the acceleration of the solar wind such as nanoflares, or by acceleration at the CIR forward shocks.

1. INTRODUCTION
The solar wind electron population near 1 AU is observed
to be dominated by a thermal (∼10 eV) Maxwellian core
(∼90%–95% of the density), with ∼5%–10% in a much hotter
(∼50 eV) halo/strahl whose velocity distribution functions
(VDFs) ….. fit to a Maxwellian/Kappa distribution.
The highly anisotropic, antisunward
field-aligned strahl results from the escape of thermal
electrons from the hot (∼106 K) solar corona (e.g., Feldman
et al. 1975; Salem et al. 2007) that carries heat flux outward,
while the isotropic halo may be due to scattering of the strahl
(e.g., Montgomery et al. 1968; Feldman et al. 1975; Rosenbauer
et al. 1977; Pilipp et al. 1987; Pierrard et al. 2001). High sensitivity
measurements covering the entire range from a few eV
up to ∼400 keV by the 3D Plasma & Energetic Particle (3DP)
instrument on the WIND spacecraft (Lin et al. 1995) discovered
a suprathermal electron component, denoted the “superhalo”,
that dominates above ∼2 keV (Lin 1997, 1998), with a powerlaw
(dJ/dE ∼ E−β with β ∼ −2.5) spectrum extending to
>100 keV, and a nearly isotropic angular distribution.
This superhalo appears to be present at all times, even in the
absence of solar or interplanetary activity, and thus appears to
be the electron counterpart of the power-law-tail suprathermal
ions above solar wind and pickup ion energies that are observed
throughout the heliosphere at all the times (e.g., Gloeckler 2003;
Fisk&Gloeckler 2006). At present, the origin of superhalo electrons
is unknown……….

Bart says:
August 31, 2013 at 12:41 pmIt was completely relevant. Stating that hundreds of people have worked on a problem gives no indication of the quality of their work.
I have studied this for four decades and know most of the good work and personally many of the people and vouch for the quality. And also know which ones are junk.

But, understanding is often not necessary to make abundant use of empirically derived knowledge.
Except that modern science is not based on empirically derived rules. And to make progress and to expand the frontier of knowledge, old empirical rules won’t do.

Your claim is that they cannot be very accurate.
My claim is that with the modern understanding the rules are extremely accurate, an example is precision cosmology.

Carla says:
August 31, 2013 at 1:22 pmWell then according to Voyager 1, instead of the gnats gyrating around the magnetic field like they had been, they are NOW running parallel.
No, they cannot. Electric charges ALWAYS spiral around magnetic field lines http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyroradius

Carla says:
August 31, 2013 at 10:19 amThis ‘Super Halo’ out to 1AU is a consistent and persistent.
the ‘out to 1 AU’ is spurious. If we had a spacecraft at 15 AU, they would say ‘out to 15 AU’, and so on.

“This superhalo appears to be present at all times, even in the absence of solar or interplanetary activity, and thus appears to be the electron counterpart of the power-law-tail suprathermal ions above solar wind and pickup ion energies”
Thus is not part of the solar wind per se, but from a population of higher energy solar energetic particles, but with much smaller number density than the solar wind particles and playing no role in the general scheme of things.

Bart says:
August 31, 2013 at 2:38 pmYour points do not say what you appear to think they say, but I am tired and see no point to further discussion on these matters.
Granted that a certain minimum level of knowledge is needed and the lack thereof makes discussion difficult.

What shifts these forces off the equatorial plane, and why more during the grand minima, and how might Earth’s climate be moderated? Now Leif, I expect a good answer because I know you’ve been thinking about this for two score years and more.
=====================

Mean period for a single rotation as observed from the Earth is given by Carrington number = 27.2753 days.
Idle mind asks :
Since there is existence of latitudinal differential rotation, why not then possibility of inner radial differential rotation? If so, what would be the rotation number for an inner sphere critical to the solar dynamo to give ‘22 year’ magnetic cycle
Idle mind calculates
27.183 days, the difference is only 0.34%
Idle mind asks:
Is the Stanford Doppler measurement system capable of such resolution?

vukcevic says:
September 1, 2013 at 11:22 amMean period for a single rotation as observed from the Earth is given by Carrington number = 27.2753 days.
No, this not correct. The Carrington period has no physical significance. It is derived by Carrington from a few years of observations as a convenient [and arbitrary] coordinate system.

@Janice Moore
I just loved that comment that you made earlier, (it seems to have gone lost in this thread?)
just remember that LS is not a believer (in God), so he is also not getting your message.
Leif just believes that everything you see around you is just co-incidental
e.g.
if you believe there is no God (like Leif ls), you are actually saying that you believe that out of absolutely nothing and guided by absolutely nobody, an incredible intelligent and intellectual person (like yourself) with a material body came into being.http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2011/07/23/why-do-i-believe-in-god/

Idle minds rarely, if ever, know what they are doing, so no significance can be attached to what they spout.
Ah well, it is worth suffering degree of usual discourtesy considering the value of the link so I shall say tanks.

HenryP says:
September 1, 2013 at 12:02 pmif you believe there is no God (like Leif ls), you are actually saying that you believe that out of absolutely nothing and guided by absolutely nobody, an incredible intelligent and intellectual person (like yourself) with a material body came into being.
A billion Hindues might disagree with your conception of a god, but WUWT is not the place to spout religious convictions, and I would think that if a creature like me [not to speak about you] is the best a god can come up with, she has not done a particularly good job to deserve elevation to a God, with the attendant worship, ritual, and idolatry.

HenryP says:
September 1, 2013 at 12:24 pmWhat is a Hindues? Why don’t you try a speller check?
Proves my point about the failure of your god to produce in me [and you!] an incredibly intelligent being who needs a spellchecker and a grammar checker to realize that a ‘billion xxxs’ is not singular. To the feeble-minded failures of your god out there I offer a link, that might be helpful http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu or https://www.facebook.com/BangladeshiHindues
Please keep your god out of WUWT

Mean period for a single rotation as observed from the Earth is given by Carrington number = 27.2753 days.
Idle mind asks :
…Since there is existence of latitudinal differential rotation,..
—
Latitudinal differential rotatation that changes and evolves.
Vuk’s how bout an educated guess as to whether polar latitudes are rotating slower in this cycle 24 than in cycle 23?

THE HIGH-LATITUDE BRANCH OF THE SOLAR TORSIONAL OSCILLATION IN THE RISING PHASE OF CYCLE 24
R. Howe et al. 2013 ApJ 767 L20 doi:10.1088/2041-8205/767/1/L20
R. Howe1, J. Christensen-Dalsgaard2,3, F. Hill4, R. Komm4, T. P. Larson5, M. Rempel3, J. Schou5, and M. J. Thompson3,6
We use global heliseismic data from the Global Oscillation Network Group, the Michelson Doppler Imager on board the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, and the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager on board the Solar Dynamics Observatory, to examine the behavior, during the rising phase of Solar Cycle 24, of the migrating zonal flow pattern known as the torsional oscillation. Although the high-latitude part of the pattern appears to be absent in the new cycle when the flows are derived by subtracting a mean across a full solar cycle, it can be seen if we subtract the mean over a shorter period in the rising phase of each cycle, and these two mean rotation profiles differ significantly at high latitudes. This indicates that the underlying high-latitude rotation has changed; we speculate that this is in response to weaker polar fields, as suggested by a recent model…

Carla says:
September 1, 2013 at 1:43 pmwhether polar latitudes are rotating slower in this cycle 24 than in cycle 23? …
we speculate that this is in response to weaker polar fields
Because of the Maxwell stresses it would seem to me also that small variations in rotation is due to changes in the magnetic field strength, but this is basically uncharted territory. Here is the paper: http://www.leif.org/EOS/TO-Polar-Fields-Howe.pdf
A problem with their analysis is that their method forces the two hemispheres to rotate at the same rate. We know that they don’t as you can see on this plot from Mount Wilson: http://obs.astro.ucla.edu/images/smdopp.jpg The Northern Hemisphere is much too blue [slower] while the South is much too red [faster]. The velocities were measured relative to a symmetric average rotation curve. We do not know the reason for these asymmetries.

Carla says:
September 1, 2013 at 4:57 pm…The rotation rate at the solar Equator seems to decrease since cycle 10 onwards…
Old news, see Figure 1 of http://www.leif.org/research/ast10867.pdf but the change is small.

Carla says:
September 1, 2013 at 1:43 pm
whether polar latitudes are rotating slower in this cycle 24 than in cycle 23? …
we speculate that this is in response to weaker polar fields
Because of the Maxwell stresses it would seem to me also that small variations in rotation is due to changes in the magnetic field strength, but this is basically uncharted territory. Here is the paper: http://www.leif.org/EOS/TO-Polar-Fields-Howe.pdf
—
Thank you very much, for the link to this paper Dr. S.
If structures on the surface, create resistance and rigidity in rotation to slow it down, why is this just the opposite for polar regions.?
In the case below what is meant by masking?

Introduction
…Rempel (2012) found that if the polar fields weaken—as has indeed been observed
in recent years (Hoeksema 2009)—
the overall rotation at high latitudes slows down,
masking the appearance of the poleward branch when the rotation-rate residuals
are formed by subtracting a long-term average…

Bart says:
September 1, 2013 at 6:59 pm“Granted that a certain minimum level of knowledge is needed and the lack thereof makes discussion difficult.” Glad we agree on something. I can recommend some references and provide a study guide if you like.
You are up to your old tricks again. It should have been obvious to you that the lack of knowledge is on your part, but, again, D&K strikes, and you are sliding down the slippery slope of escalating insults. You just can’t help yourself. Your olive branch has already wilted.

Carla says:
September 1, 2013 at 5:28 pmIn the case below what is meant by masking?
Assuming that the rotation is fixed makes it more difficult to detect a signal that is the difference between observation and a fixed form of the rotation, if, in fact, the rotation is not fixed and itself varies with time. By using different rotations law for the early part and for the later part, removes the ‘masking’ and makes the signal stand out better.

represent almost all of my data on maximum temps. (=Energy-in, which is not the same as energy-out!)
In my best fit, I saw that each quadrant has a time span of about 22 years, on average. One whole wave makes 88 years, as evident from previous investigations:
Persistence of the Gleissberg 88-year solar cycle over the last ˜12,000 years: Evidence from cosmogenic isotopes

William Arnold suggested that it is mainly the position of the two planets Saturn and Uranus that can be directly linked to the 22 year solar cycle. I looked at this again. At first the dates did not make sense.

Then I put the dates of the various positions of Uranus and Saturn next to it:

1) we had/have Saturn synodical with Uranus (i.e. in line with each other)

1897, 1942, 1988, 2032

2) we had complete 180 degrees opposition between Saturn and Uranus

1919, 1965, 2009,

In all 7 of my own results & projections, there is an exact 7 or 8 years delay, before “the push/pull ” occurs, that switches the dynamo inside the sun, changing the sign or the direction of warming/cooling.….!!!! Conceivably the gravitational pull of these two planets has some special lob sided character, causing the actual switches. Perhaps Uranus’ apparent side ward motion (inclination of equator by 98 degrees) works like a push-pull trigger. Either way, there is a clear correlation. Other synodical cycles of planets probably have some interference as well either delaying or extending the normal cycle time a little bit. (20-24, as you seem to think) .But in the end the average comes back to about 22 years for each HN solar cycle. So it appears William Arnold’s report was right after all….?(“On the Special Theory of Order”, 1985).

abstract
..ABSTRACT
Solar variability affects Earth climate. It is proposed that this forcing primarily goes via
the interaction of the Solar Wind with the Earth’s magnetosphere, rather than via changes
in irradiance, which is generally assumed. The cyclic variations in Solar Wind emission
generate corresponding changes in the Earth’s rate of rotation (LOD), as recorded by
correlations between sunspot numbers and LOD-variations. Variations in Earth’s rotation
affect not only the atmospheric circulation but also the ocean circulation. Because the
ocean water has a very high heat storing capacity, changes in the ocean circulation will
affect regional climate. The redistribution of oceanic water masses also gives rise of
irregular changes in sea level over the globe…

Golovkov (1983) plotted Earth’s rate of rotation (spin rate) against sunspot numbers
and found that high spin rates correlated with low sunspot numbers and low spin rates with
high sunspot numbers. Mörner (2010) plotted LOD against sunspot numbers for the period
1831–1995 and found a linear relationship where low LOD values (high spin rate)
correlated with low sunspot numbers adn high LOD values with high sunspot numbers.
Consequently, the Earth’s rotation accelerates at low solar activity and decelerates at high
solar activity….

Once again, my olive branch was rebuffed by a snarky response. I’m not much into unilateral disarmament. This is a two way street: you will receive the same treatment as you project. As far as D&K is concerned, you know very little of signal processing, and evince no understanding of the things I have tried to explain to you. Next time you write such bilge, look in a mirror.

HenryP says:
September 2, 2013 at 7:38 am

I’m not much into planetary correlations. There are so many cyclic astronomical phenomena, it is not that difficult to find one or two which happen to match up to some degree with observations of the Sun. It is difficult to imagine that a particular cycle exerts dominant influence while others have little effect. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine that any of them would have a significant effect, as the means to couple them with solar dynamics is largely limited to infinitesimal tidal effects. I do not rule it out entirely, but I think there are more likely explanations.

I deal a lot with structural elements in my work. The dynamics of complex structures obey particular partial differential equations, the solutions of which are typically expanded as a series ofmode shapes which are modulated by lightly damped, randomly excited, quasi-sinusoidal functions of time. Such solutions are generally applicable to boundary value problems involving partial differential equations. Given the prominently observable quasi-cyclic behavior of solar dynamics, it is very extremely likely, in my estimation, that we are dealing with such a problem here.

Geeps Vuks, seems after reading the above, you must have known Nils-Axel Morner’s work ‘intimately.’
What he states and what we have been seeing in your graphs and charts sounds and looks to be one and the same.
After having read this, I do think that I have a somewhat better understanding on circulations and patterns of both atmosphere and oceans due to changes in LOD.

Bart says:
September 2, 2013 at 12:24 pmOnce again, my olive branch was rebuffed by a snarky response.
I fail to see that pointing out that you have very little knowledge of physics [as you demonstrate in your comments on Quantum Mechanics and on the Sun] and that that makes discussion difficult is a snarky response in any way. The truth is never ‘snarky’. Your response was very much snarky and uncalled for.evince no understanding of the things I have tried to explain to you.
Those things are well-understood [even by me] but are simply not applicable to the physics at hand. This is where your ignorance and over-confidence show. You have to accept that and live with it [hard as it may be for you]. The issue that you do not understand is that the Sun is not a ‘structure’ in the same sense as, say, an AM-radio or a violin.

Henry@Bart
Thx. I do appreciate you giving me your thoughts on this/
I still think that the chance of me running into such a co-incidence into observed data & best fit (for past and future), is too small. It seems to me there must be a gravitational trigger that pulls an electrical switch; it just might in fact be the lob sided nature of our planetary system, in which case it is natural to expect two planets to be more dominant.
Either way, I wish we could all work together….for the common good of all mankind.
7 billion people count on us getting it right….now.
the future, as far as I see it, still looks bleak for 2021-2028 @ > [40] latitudehttp://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/div/ocp/drought/dust_storms.shtml

2013
……Another effect of the interaction between the Solar Wind and the Earth’s magnetic
field seems to be that it affects the Earth’s rate of rotation where Solar Minima lead to
accelerations and Solar Maxima to decelerations
(as discussed in previous papers; Mörner, 1989a, 1990, 1995a, 1996a, 2010, 2011, 2012).

Very interesting comments. Have you ever considered investigating the beginning of the where the magnetic energy comes from? I have and it was found to be coming from the active Electron. My Book:Climate Change-Explained by Magnetism? ISBN978646477229 explains a lot of what is being discussed here, and I ask you to also visit; ttsw@bigblog.com.au. Thankyou.

Bart says:
September 2, 2013 at 9:18 pmYou didn’t even know satellites experience time dilation in free-fall.
Time dilation requires two observers moving relative to each other or in different gravitational fields. For a single observer there is no time dilation. The local experience of time passing never actually changes for anyone regardless of their motion. If two observers are in relative motion the point of view of each of them will be that it is the other’s clock that is ticking at a slower rate. See, you display your ignorance again. The other example was your insistence that Quantum Mechanics is just a bunch of empirical rules. There are no empirical rules, everything can be derived from deep mathematical considerations, such as this: the state of a quantum mechanical system is given by a vector in a complex vector space H with Hermitian inner product, and this: the observables of a quantum mechanical system are given by self-adjoint linear operators on H, and so on. But let all that slide: you don’t need to have deep knowledge of everything [even if you believe you have] in order to function. I used the example of my incompetence at violin playing. You show your incompetence at physics. No stigmas attached to either.

Thank you, Master of the Obvious. The necessity of multiple observers is built into the very name “Relativity”, so you’re just being argumentative to cover up your failure. Your statement here was dead wrong.

“There are no empirical rules, everything can be derived from deep mathematical considerations, such as blah, blah, blah”.

You have no idea what you are talking about. You’re spouting mathematical rules which have been developed specifically to match the empirical evidence. But, the mathematical rules do not tell you why. It’s just math.

Do you really think you know this subject better than Richard Feynman? You are in a very deep hole. Stop digging.

Bart says:
September 2, 2013 at 11:35 pmYou have no idea what you are talking about. You’re spouting mathematical rules which have been developed specifically to match the empirical evidence.
Science must always agree with observations. This is very different from just saying that QM is a bunch of empirical rules. Again you are trashing around. I have noticed that you have brought precisely zero to the table in this thread. The usual nonsense about holes, digging, pitiful, etc is just boiler plate desperation; we have seen that before and it is hollow. It must be hard for you to accept that you know little of the relevant physics, and that you do not understand what Feynman meant. And you will probably continue to misuse WUWT instead of taking your unmasking as a man.